♦ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. i 

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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



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THE CHILD'S 

True Christian 
Religion. 



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NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY THE GENERAL CONVENTION 
OF THE 

NEW JERUSALEM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

AT ITS PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

20 Cooper Union. 

18 68. 

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 186S, by 

J. E. PUTNAM, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 

Southern District of New York. 



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1 



NOTE. 



In preparing this book, the writer has had in view the 
general plan and teachings of The True Christian Beligion, 
by Emanuel Swedenborg. For the sake of convenience, 
however, he has placed what he had to say about the Lord's 
Prayer and the Ten Commandments by themselves, at the 
beginning, as it is desirable to instruct children in those 
portions of the Word, before proceeding to the more diffi- 
cult doctrinal points. 

It is not intended that the book should be used as a cate- 
chism, but rather as a hand-book, both for teachers and for 
children, to aid them in comprehending, in a rational man- 
ner, the leading doctrines of the New Church. The only 
portions which are to be committed to memory verbally 
are the parts of the Word prefixed to each chapter. 

Thomas Hitchcock. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

PAGE 

The Lord's Prayer 9 

The Ten Commandments 25 

The First Commandment 34 

The Second Commandment 41 

The Third Commandment 47 

The Fourth Commandment 55 

The Fifth Commandment 64 

The Sixth Commandment 69 

The Seventh Commandment 75 

The Eighth Commandment 80 

The Ninth and Tenth Commandments 87 

PART II. 

The Lord the Creator 95 

The Lord the Redeemer, or Saviour 102 

The Holy Trinity 110 

The Sacred Scriptures, or the Word of the Lord 119 

The Internal Sense of the Word 127 

Correspondences 134 

Faith 141 

Charity and Good Works 146 

Repentance 152 

Reformation and Regeneration 155 

Baptism 160 

The Holy Supper 165 

The Second Coming of the Lord 171 

The New Heaven and the New Church 180 

Heaven and Hell, and the Life after Death 188 



PART I. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER 



AND 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Our Father, who art in the heavens ; hal- 
lowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also upon 
the earth. Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive 
our debtors. And lead us not into tempta- 
tion ; but deliver us from evil. For thine is 
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
for ever. Amen. (Matt. vi. 9-13.) 

This prayer is called the Lord's Prayer, be- 
cause the Lord Himself taught it to men when 
He was on earth. If yon will look at the sixth 
chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, where it is 
written, yon will find that He says about it ; 
"After this manner therefore pray ye;" and 
again, in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke, where 
we also find it, it is said that one of the disciples 
said to Him, " Lord teach ns to pray, as John 
also taught his disciples," and that then He 
replied by telling him, when he prayed, to say 
this prayer. It is a very short prayer, but it 



10 

means a great deal, and the more we study it 
the more we shall find in it. 

It begins : Our Father, who art in the 
Heavens. " Our Father " means the Lord Him- 
self; not our earthly father, but our Father "in 
the heavens." Earthly fathers are as much the 
Lord's children as their own children are. They 
were all little boys once, and had fathers and 
mothers of their own to take care of them, and 
give them clothes and food and send them to 
school. It is the Lord who still watches over 
them and gives them all that they give you. He 
keeps them alive as he does you, and He makes 
everything grow out of the ground for them and 
for you to eat. He has made everything out of 
which clothes arfd houses are made, and the coal 
and wood which warm you in winter. He makes 
you grow too, and gives you the power to talk, 
to learn your^ lessons and read books, and under- 
stand what you read and hear. When you go to 
sleep at night, He sends angels to watch over 
you, and wakes you up in the morning strong 
and well. Did you ever think, when you went 
to bed, that if the Lord did not keep you alive 
you would never wake up again ? And so, too, 
He keeps your fathers and mothers alive, that 
they may help Him take care of you, and do all 
that He wants done to make you good and happy 
children. 



THE LORD'S PRATER. 11 

Now, I dare say some of you wonder why you 
never see this Heavenly Father in the same way 
as you do your earthly fathers. But the reason 
is that your real eyes are now covered up with 
flesh and blood eyes, so that you can only see 
this earth, and the things which are upon it, and 
not heaven and heavenly things. You cannot 
see the angels, although they are always near 
you; nor the beautiful houses and gardens in 
which they live, although they are as close to you 
as anything which you do see. But -when you 
die, as people say ; that is, when you lay off the 
body of flesh and blood which covers your real 
body, then your real eyes will be opened, and 
you will see the angels and heaven, and every- 
thing in heaven, and then you will see the Lord, 
your Heavenly Father. 

But even in heaven you will mostly see the Lord 
only as you see the sun here. You know that the 
sun is so bright that you cannot look at it, so as to 
see its shape, unless you look through colored or 
smoked glass; or unless it is dimmed by clouds, 
or by the fog or smoke of the earth, as is the case 
at its setting and rising. So, in heaven, the Lord 
is so bright and glorious, that you will not be 
able to look at Him except when He covers Him- 
self so as not to hurt your eyes. Then He ap- 
pears like a beautiful man, as He did to the Apos- 



12 THE LOED'S PEAYEE. 

ties, when He was transfigured before them, as 
we read in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, 
and to John, as we are told in the first chapter 
of Revelation. 

There was one time, however, when the Lord 
was seen by all kinds of people while they lived 
here. We are told in the Bible how He once 
cansed Himself to take on the body of a little 
baby, and to grow up like any other child ; and, 
when He got to be a man, how He went about 
among people teaching them, and curing all of 
them that were sick and asked to be cured. But 
then very few men would believe that He was 
the Lord. They said He was only a man like 
themselves ; and there are many people now-a- 
days, who, in spite of all that they are told about 
Him, say the same thing. At last He made 
the body, which He thus took on Himself, 
divine and glorious, so that it could not be seen 
any more as it was at first ; and now we must 
wait, as I have said, until our bodies die, before 
we can see Him. In the meanwhile, He has 
given you earthly fathers and mothers to help 
Him take care of you ; and He tells you to honor 
them and obey them, because they do this for 
Him and for you. 

You will notice He is called our Father "in 
the heavens." Some people say in " heaven" 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 13 

only, but this is not what the Lord told ns to 
say. He said " the heavens,' 5 because there are 
three heavens, and in those heavens many heaven- 
ly societies, as there are different countries, and 
towns, and cities on earth. It is said " in the 
heavens," too, not because He is not also just as 
much really here, but because, as I have told 
you, He is constantly seen there. 

Hallowed be Thy name. A great deal is 
said in the Bible about the Lord's name, and 
about the way we ought to use it. One of the 
Ten Commandments, you know, is " Thou shalt 
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, 
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, that 
taketh His name in vain." So the Psalmist tells 
us, to " sing praises unto His name" " to exalt 
His name" and " bless His name" and in the 
Revelation, those whom the Lord had saved sang, 
" Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify 
thy name, for Thou alone art holy ?" Here, too, 
in this prayer, we say " Hallowed " (or " holy "), 
"be Thy name" Why is so much said about 
what seems to be a mere word ? 

If you will only think of it, the name of any^ 
one, when it is spoken, brings up before your mind 
all you know about him. Take anybody you are 
acquainted with, and the moment any one speaks 
the name by which he is called, you cannot help 



14 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

thinking how he looks, and talks and acts, and 
whether you like him or dislike him. His name 
is the same thing, when yon are away from him, 
as he himself. If you love him, you will always 
speak his name with a feeling of love, or if you 
are naughty enough to hate him, you will show 
it by the way you pronounce his name. Cannot 
you tell, yourself, whether any one loves another 
or not by the way he calls his name, when you 
are talking about him % Just so the Lord's name 
stands for all we know or think about Him, and 
if we love and honor Him, we shall always speak 
His name reverently. To use His name to 
swear by, as wicked men do, is telling everybody 
that we do not care about Him ; and to speak it 
hastily and without thinking who we are speak- 
ing about, shows that we do not really believe 
Him to be our heavenly Father, who is so good 
and loving to us. 

The true way then to hallow the Lord's name, 
is to try and always think holy thoughts about 
Him, to do what He tells us to do, and always 
think how we can most please Him. If you 
think and act thus, you cannot possibly bring 
yourself to speak His name except with rever- 
ence ; and the more you are used to thinking and 
•acting thus, the more you will hallow it. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 15 

Thy kingdom come. A kingdom is a country 
where all the people obey a king. The country 
where he is not obeyed is not his kingdom, but 
some one else's. Thus when the people of this 
country refused to obey the king of England, the 
country ceased to be part of the kingdom of Eng- 
land, and became an independent nation. Just 
so the Lord's kingdom is wherever people obey 
Him, and wherever He is not obeyed, it is not 
His kingdom. When we pray, then, that His 
kingdom may come, we pray that more and 
more people may obey Him, and that they 
should all do what He tells them to do, as a 
king's subjects do what their king tells them to 
do. Perhaps you will want to know the reason 
why we pray for this. 

We pray that everybody may obey the Lord, 
and thus belong to His kingdom and help to 
extend it, because that is the way for everybody 
to be happy. The Lord has given us the Com- 
mandments, and tells us to keep them, because 
by keeping them we shall avoid the pain and 
misery which arise from disobeying them. He 
created us to be happy, and He made this beau- 
tiful world and all the nice things in it, to help 
us be so, and we would be so, if we would only 
do exactly as He wants us to. But men have 
become wicked, and love to do wicked things, 



16 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

and this makes them, and those around them, 
miserable. When they murder, and steal, and 
lie, you know they cannot feel any real pleasure. 
And if everybody hated everybody else, and 
tried to kill and rob everybody else, and if they 
all despised the Lord, and if all little boys and 
girls refused to mind their fathers and mothers, 
would it not make us all wretched ? The Lord 
knows it would, and so He tells us not to do 
such things. It is just as if your father were 
to tell you not to put your hand into the fire, 
because he knows it would burn you and give 
you great pain. For this reason, then, we pray 
that everybody may obey the Lord, and that thus 
His kingdom may come. 

Thy well be done as in heaven so also 
upon the earth. Doing the Lord's will means 
something the same as belonging to His king- 
dom, only it is a great deal better. People obey 
a king because, if they do not, they will be put 
in prison, or be punished in some other way, and 
so they are compelled to do as he says, even if 
they do not wish to. But the Lord wants more 
than this. He wants to have us do as He tells 
us to, because we love to, not because we are 
afraid. Don't you suppose your father likes a 
great deal better to have you be a good child, 
and learn your lessons well, and not quarrel, and 



17 

steal, and do naughty things, because yon wish 
to show your love for Him, than because you are 
afraid of being punished. Just so the Lord 
wants us to Love Him and do His will, and 
therefore He tells us to pray that we and every- 
body else may do it. He says, " as in heaven so 
also upon earth," because in heaven, you know, 
all the angels love Him, and love to do His will, 
and if men on earth would do the same we 
should be as happy as the angels. 

Give us this day our daily bread. " Bread " 
means all that we eat and drink, and everything 
that we need to keep us alive and well. It 
means, too, everything that our souls feed upon, 
all the happy feelings and pleasant thoughts 
which come into our minds, and all that we learn 
from books and teachers, or from talking with 
other people. It may seem strange to you that 
the Lord should give us all these things, when 
you do not see Him do it, but if you will think 
of it, where else can they come from % He makes 
the sun to shine and the rain to fall, and how 
could anything grow if he did not do this %' 
How could a single seed, even, grow if he did 
not make it grow ? No man can make a real 
grain of wheat himself. He might take a piece 
of wood or stone and make it into the shape of 
a grain of wheat, but you know very well it 



18 

would not sprout. But men take the grain 
which the Lord has made, and plant it in the 
ground, and the Lord sends the warm sunshine 
and the gentle rain, and it sprouts, and grows 
up, and bears plenty of other grains which can 
be made into bread. So it is with the apple- 
trees, and the vines, and the cows, and sheep, 
and everything else that we make use of. The 
Lord gives them to us all, day after day. He it 
is who puts happy thoughts and feelings into 
our minds whenever we let Him, by doing as He 
tells us to do. He gives us the power of hearing, 
and talking, and learning, and helps us to learn 
all about Himself, and what he has done for us. 
All He asks of us is, to ask Him for what we 
want, and to thank Him for it, when He gives it 
to us. And He requires this, because the more 
we ask of Him, the more He can give us. He 
cannot give you more to eat and drink than you 
want. When you are not hungry, you cannot 
eat, and when you are not thirsty, you cannot 
drink, with any pleasure, and, just so, if you do 
not want to have kind thoughts and pleasant 
feelings towards other people, He cannot give 
them to you. You cannot learn your lessons if 
you do not try, and you cannot learn about the 
Lord if you do not try. So when he tells us to 
pray for our daily bread, He means that we 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 19 

should think how He gives it to us, and that we 
should love to have Him give it to us, and try- 
to do what is necessary to get it. 

And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive 
our debtors. Sometimes it is said, " And forgive 
us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass 
against us." This is because the Lord's Prayer 
was written in Greek, and in translating it into 
English, some people do it one way, and some in 
another, but they both really amount to the same 
thing. When any one trespasses against us he 
becomes our debtor, that is, he owes it to us to 
repair the mischief he has done us. If one of 
your playmates breaks one of your toys, you feel 
as though he ought to give you another; if he 
strikes you in anger you think he ought to be 
punished, and if he has told lies about you, that 
he ought to ask your pardon. So that trespasses 
are debts and the trespasser is a debtor. "What 
then does the Lord mean by telling us to ask 
Him to forgive us our debts to Him as we forgive 
debts owing to us ? 

Our debts to the Lord come from our wrong 
doings. Whenever we do what he tells us we 
ought not to do, it is our duty to repair the mis- 
chief. If we have done an injury to any one we 
become his debtor, as I have said, to the amount 
of the injury. But besides this debt we have an- 



20 

other to pay the Lord, because we have dis- 
obeyed Him, and many times we do this without 
being in debt to any one else. We may be very 
angry, for instance, and want to strike another 
person, but hold back because we are afraid of 
him. Or, we may make up our minds to take 
something that belongs to another, and somebody 
may see us just as we are going to do it, and keep 
us from doing it. Now, of course, we have not 
become a debtor to the person we wanted to hurt 
or steal from, but we have become a debtor to 
the Lord, because we meant to do wrong, and 
would have done it, if we had not been prevented. 
If we had not done it because it was a sin, and 
not because we could not, we should not have 
been in his debt. There would have been noth- 
ing for which we should owe Him. But having 
wanted to, and tried to do as much as we dared, 
we have done towards the Lord as much wrong 
as if we had gone on and done as we wanted to. 
So we become the Lord's debtors, always, when 
we do, or even intend to do, wrong. 

These debts to the Lord, then, you see, are 
wrong feelings and desires, and the only way we 
can get rid of them, or be forgiven by Him, is to 
put them out of our minds ourselves. It is wrong 
to feel angry and unforgiving towards those 
who do wrong to us. If you are angry with 



21 

a child who has broken one of your toys, and 
want to take his toys away from him because of 
it, or if you want to strike him back when he 
strikes you, or to call him names because he calls 
you names, and so make him pay for it, as you 
say, your mind is full of bad feelings, and you 
become the Lord's debtor yourself. You must 
try to forgive your own debtors, that is, you 
must try to put away all angry and evil feel- 
ings, or else the Lord cannot help you and re- 
lease you from what makes your debt to Him. 
So the Lord tells us, "If ye forgive not men 
their trespasses, neither can your heavenly Father 
forgive your trespasses." Trespasses and debts, 
as I have told you, are the same thing. The 
Lord never hates anybody himself for not doing 
as He commands them to. He loves them, and 
is sorry to see that they are naughty. But he 
cannot forgive them, that is, He cannot take' 
away the wrong feelings out of them unless 
they help Him by putting away these wrong 
feelings themselves, and so you must always try 
to feel kindly towards all who do wrong towards 
you, if you would have the Lord really forgive 
you. He promises that He will, for He says, 
" For if you forgive men their trespasses your 
heavenly Father will also forgive you." 



22 the lord's prayer. 

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
us from evil. It seems strange, at first, that the 
Lord should have told us to pray Him not to 
lead us into temptation, when he is so good and 
kind, and does not want anybody to do wrong if 
He can help it. One would think that there was 
no need of asking Him not to do what he never 
does do, or try to do. Still there must be a rea- 
son for putting this into the prayer, and we must 
try and find out what it is. 

Being* tempted to do wrong, is to have a desire* 
or wish to do wrong. "When we are struck, we 
are tempted to strike back, that is, we want to 
strike back. When we see something nice that 
does not belong to us, we feel a wish to U'ke it 
slyly, that is, we are tempted to steal, and so it 
is with all other sins. Our temptations to com- 
mit them are feelings which make us want to 
commit them. Now, when these feelings are on 
us, it seems as though the Lord gave them to us, 
but He does not. They come from hell, from 
the evil spirits, who delight to make other peo- 
ple as wicked and miserable as themselves. The 
Lord really tries to keep us out of them, but as 
He cannot do this unless we look to Him, and 
pray Him to help us, He is willing that we 
should think He causes them to come upon us, 
because then we will pray to Him more earnest- 



23 

ly, and be the sooner delivered. When, there- 
fore, we say, "Lead us not into temptation," it 
means, " Do not let the devils tempt ns," " Do 
not let us fall into the power of these evil spirits," 
for we also ask Him to " deliver us from evil." 
"We should say this part of the Lord's prayer 
always when we are provoked to anger, or 
tempted to lie or steal, or say unkind things, or 
to do anything wrong, for then the Lord can send 
and help us, and lead us out of the temptations, 
and deliver us from evil. 
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, 

AND THE GLORY FOR EVER. AMEN. What 

the Lord's kingdom is, I have already told 
you, and you know the Lord has all power 
and glory, and always has had it, and will have 
it for ever. "Amen " means " true " or " yes," and 
as, at the end of the prayer, we go back over the 
whole of it in our thoughts, and think of it as a 
whole, we then say " Amen," to show that we 
think every word of it in truth and earnestness. 
It is as if when you had asked something of your 
earthly father, and he should say, " Are you in 
earnest ? " and you should think it all over, and 
say, " Truly I am." So, now, when you say 
" Amen," at the end of the Lord's Prayer, you 
mean that you are in earnest, and really want the 
Lord to do all that you ask for. 



24 

Now, if you will think of these things, when 
yon say the Lord's prayer, it will help you 
to say it so as to get much more good from it, 
than if you say it without knowing what it 
means, and if you will also pray the Lord to 
show you more of its meaning, you will find that 
He will do so, and it will all become clearer and 
clearer to you. For he says, elsewhere, "Ask 
and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, 
knock and it shall be opened unto you: for 
every one that asketh receiveth, and he that 
seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it 
shall be opened." 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 
I. 

I AM THE LORD THY GOD, WHO HAVE 
BROUGHT THEE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, 
OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. THOU SHALT 
HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE Me. TllOU shalt 

not make unto thee any graven image, or 
any likeness of anything that is in heaven 
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that 
is in the water under the earth : thou shalt 
not bow down thyself to them, nor serve 
them : for I the Lord thy God am a jealous 
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children unto the third and fourth gene- 
ration of them that hate me ; and showing 
mercy unto the thousandth generation ot 
them that love me and keep my command- 



* In learning this and the other long commandments, young chil- 
dren may be allowed to omit the portions not printed in capitals. 

2 



26 THE TEST COMMANDMENTS. 

II. 

Thou shalt not take the name of the 
Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not 
hold him guiltless, that taketh His name in 
vain. 

III. 

Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it 
holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 
thy work : but the seventh day is the Sab- 
bath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt 
not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy 
daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid- 
servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that 
is within thy gates : for in six days the Lord 
made the heavens and the earth, the sea and 
all that in them is, and rested the seventh 
day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath 
day, and hallowed it. 

, IV. 

Honor thy Father and thy Mother, 
that thy days may- be long upon the land 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 27 

V. 

Thou shalt not Kill. 

VI. 
Thou shalt not commit Adultery. 

VII. 
Thou shalt not Steal. 
VIII. 
Thou shalt not bear false witness 
against thy neighbor. 

IX. 

Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbor's 
house. 

X. 

Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbor's 
wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-ser 
vant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything 
that is thy neighbor's. (Ex. xx. 1-17. 

About thirty-three hundred years ago, soon 
after the children of Israel had escaped from 
their cruel bondage in Egypt, and while they 
were on their way to the Land of Canaan, the 
Lord called them all together in the desert of 



28 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Sinai, at the foot of Mount Sinai, and there, 
coming down upon the top of the mountain in 
the midst of clouds, and smoke, and fire, and 
with thunders and lightnings, gave them the 
Ten Commandments. It is written in the Word, 
" And it came to pass on the third day, in the 
morning, that there were thunders and light- 
nings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and 
the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud ; so 
that all the people that was in the camp trem- 
bled. And Moses brought forth the people out 
of the camp to meet with God ; and they stood 
at the nether part of the mount. And Mount 
Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the 
Lord descended upon it in fire. And the smoke 
thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and 
the whole mount quaked greatly. And when 
the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed 
louder and louder, Moses spake, and God an- 
swered him by a voice." (Ex. xix. 16-19.) The 
people were not allowed, we are told, to come 
very near to the mountain, for fear they should 
be destroyed by the terrible presence of the Lord, 
and bounds, or marks, were placed, beyond which 
they were forbidden to pass. So they stood a 
little way off, and heard the Lord's voice, and 
even then, they could not bear it long, for you 
will find, if you will read the nineteenth verse of 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 29 

the twentieth chapter of Exodus, where the Com- 
mandments are written, that they said to Moses, 
" Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let 
not God speak with us lest we die." They then 
went still further away, and the Lord spoke the 
rest of what He had to say to them to Moses 
alone, and Moses afterwards repeated it to them. 
We are told, too, that the Lord wrote these 
Commandments twice, with His own finger, 
upon two tables, or flat pieces of stone. The 
first tables on which He wrote them Moses had 
in his hands when he came down from the mount, 
but when he found that the people, although they 
had so lately heard the commandment against 
worshiping idols, had made an image of a calf 
out of gold, and were worshipping it, it made 
him so angry, that he threw the stones down 
upon the ground, and they were dashed to pieces. 
The Lord then told him to make two other tables, 
like the first ones, and He wrote the Command- 
ments upon them a second time, and these two 
tables were laid in the ark, or chest, about which 
we read so much in the Bible. It was made of 
wood, covered with gold, and carefully kept in 
a tent, called the Tabernacle, and when Solo- 
mon's Temple was built, it was put into the holi- 
est place in it. Many wonderful things are re- 
lated about this ark, as, that when the priests 



30 • THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

who bore it on their shoulders stepped into the 
river Jordan., the water turned back, and let the 
whole people walk across on dry land ; that when 
the Philistines once captured it, and put it in 
their temple, the image of their heathen god fell 
on its face before it, and was afterwards found 
lying on the ground, with its head and both the 
palms of the hands cut oif ; and that when a man 
named Uzzah, put his hand upon it, the Lord 
smote him so that he died. These things hap- 
pened because the ark contained the Lord's Com- 
mandments, written by Himself, and show us 
how holy they are. 

The Ten Commandments are, therefore, the 
Lord's own words, spoken with. His own mouth 
in the hearing of a great multitude of people, and 
written with His own finger upon tables of stone, 
which He directed to be kept and treated by the 
children of Israel as the holiest thing they had. 
Is it not plain that He meant these Command- 
ments to serve some purpose of great good to all 
men ? For the Lord does nothing except for our 
good ; and when He took such care to give these 
Commandments in such a solemn and terrible 
way, and to provide so carefully for their not 
being forgotten, He must have done so because 
it was particularly important to our happiness 
for us to know them and obey them. 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 31 

If you will look at the Commandments, yon 
will see that nearly all of them tell ns not to do 
certain evil things ; as, not to worship false gods, 
not to take the Lord's name in vain, not to work 
on the Sabbath, not to kill, not to steal, and so 
on. There is only one of them, indeed, that 
which says, " Honor thy father and thy mother," 
which does not thus forbid ns to do some wrong. 
If you will look, too, at the sins which are for- 
bidden, you will see that many of them are such 
as would make us all miserable if they were al- 
lowed. "What would become of the world if we 
all thought it right to kill those with whom we 
were angry, to steal everything we took a fancy 
to away from its owner, or to lie and deceive each 
other whenever it suited us ? It does not, to be 
sure, appear so plainly that mischief would result 
from breaking every one of the Commandments, 
but I hope, when I come to speak of them sepa- 
rately, to show you that it would, and how it 
would. But without this you can see enough, I 
think, to be satisfied that the Lord had in view 
our happiness when He gave these Command- 
ments to the world. If we would only obey them 
faithfully, this earth would become like heaven. 
We should have no sin, no hatred and quarrelling, 
and nothing to cause any suffering whatever. 

It is because of the good effect of obedience 



32 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

to the Commandments that they are called the 
covenant, (Ex. xxxiv. 28,) the tables of stone 
upon which they were written, the tables of the 
covenant, (Deut. ix. 9, 11, 15,) and the ark, or 
chest, in which these tables were kept, the ark 
of the covenant. The word, covenant, means 
something which joins together, for when we 
shun the sins which the Commandments forbid, 
we are joined to the Lord in love to Him. The 
Lord loves us all, and desires to treat us as His 
dear children, and is ready to bestow upon us 
everything that will make us truly happy. 
When we sin, we turn ourselves away from 
Him, and refuse to receive the happiness He 
wishes us to enjoy, and it is only when we turn 
away from our sins and back to Him, that He 
can again do for us what He wishes to. Now, 
as the Commandments point out to us what the 
sins are, which come between us and Him, and 
show us how we may be joined to Him, they are 
called the* covenant. They are also called the 
testimony, (Ex. xxxi. 18,) because they thus 
testify, or show, the Lord's will and our duty. 

It was because, too, of this effect of the Com- 
mandments in joining us to the Lord and the 
Lord to us, that they were written on two tables 
instead of one. Some of the Commandments, 
you will see, tell us what sins we must avoid as 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 33 

against God ; that we must not withhold worship 
from Him and have other gods, nor take His 
name in vain, nor work on His Sabbath, while 
the others tell us what we must not do to our 
fellow men, as I have already pointed out to 
you. The former are called the laws of the first 
table> the latter the laws of the second table. 
Now, we cannot love the Lord unless we also 
love our fellow men, and act rightly toward 
them, and unless we do this, as well as honor the 
Lord, we have no covenant or union with Him. 
The Commandments are also ten in number, be- 
cause ten is a complete series. We count by 
tens, you know, and when we get up to ten we 
put down a cipher, and begin over again. So 
the Ten Commandments contain all our duties to 
the Lord and to our fellow men, and when we 
obey them perfectly we obey the whole of the 
divine law. How they contain so much in so 
little a space, I will try and show you by show- 
ing you more fully what each one means. 



THE FIKST COMMANDMENT. 

THOU SHALT HAYE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. 

This Commandment teaches us, first of all, 
that we must not worship images or idols of 
wood, stone, brass, or anything of the kind, as 
the heathen do, for it goes on to say, " Thou 
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or 
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, 
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the 
water under the earth : thou shalt not bow down 
thyself to them, nor serve them." A " graven" 
image is something that is cut out with a knife 
or chisel, or some such tool, and shaped into the 
likeness of a man or an animal. Once, nearly 
the whole world used to worship such images, 
and even now there are millions of people in Asia 
and Africa who do it. Sometimes it is the im- 
age of a man to which they bow down, but oft- 
ener it is that of an ugly monster, part man and 
part beast or fish. This image is set up in a 
place called a temple, and people come and say 
their prayers to it, and make it presents of mon- 
ey, and fruits, and other things, which they think 
would please it. They put them down in front 
of it, and leave them there, but of course the im- 
age never touches them. They are carried away 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 35 

by the cunning men who take care of the image, 
and who call themselves its priests. These 
priests, too, tell the silly people that their god 
wishes them to do a great many wicked things, 
sometimes to kill little children, sometimes to kill 
themselves, and sometimes to kill great numbers 
of men and women, besides burning women when 
their husbands die, and drowning sick people in 
the water, and the people do so, because they 
think the image is a god, and will punish them 
if they do not. If they would only obey the 
Lord instead, and not worship these wooden and 
stone images, and believe all their priests tell 
them, they would refuse to do these wicked things, 
and be a great deal happier than they are. For 
the Lord tells us to love and be kind to every 
one, and takes no pleasure in having us do as the 
heathen do, and he has given us this Command- 
ment to teach us so. He says, " Thou shalt have 
no other gods before Me," and this means that we 
are not to mind what the priests of these false 
gods say, but only what we read in the Bible, 
which is His "Word. 

But we may disobey this Commandment in 
other ways than by worshiping idols, like the 
heathen. We may make idols of ourselves, by 
always trying to do what pleases us, instead of 
what pleases the Lord, or what will make others 



36 THE TEN COMMAOTMENTS. 

happy. A little boy who is always thinking of 
his own self, and how to get everything he wants, 
and is never willing to let any one else enjoy his 
books or playthings, makes himself a god, and 
worships himself. He thinks, though he does not 
say so, that he is the chief person in the world, 
and that everything must give way to him, and 
this is really setting himself up to be worshiped. 
So a child who tries to get rid of learning his 
lesson, or doing what his parents or teachers tell 
him to, because it gives him trouble, really wor- 
ships himself and not the Lord, for the Lord 
tells him to honor his father and mother, and do 
as they say, And, indeed, whoever does what 
the Lord tells him not to do, really denies that 
the Lord is God, and makes himself God in His 
place. He says that he knows better what he 
ought to do than the Lord does, and that he is 
wiser than He is. The Lord, for instance, says, 
" Thou shalt not steal," and when any one steals 
what belongs to some one else, because he wants 
it for his own use, he really says to himself, " I. 
don't care if the Lord has told me not to steal ; 
I don't mean to mind Him. I know better what 
is good for me .than He does, and I want this 
thing and will take it." If he really worshiped 
the Lord as~ God, he would say, " The Lord is 
God, and He tells me not to take without per- 



THE FIKST COMMANDMENT. 37 

mission what does not belong to me. He knows 
best, and I will do as He says." So yon see that 
this Commandment, by being pnt first, teaches 
lis that we should obey all the rest because the 
Lord has given them to us, and because not to 
obey them would be a sin against Him, and set- 
ting ourselves up above Him. 

Besides setting up ourselves as gods in place of 
the Lord, and worshiping ourselves instead of 
Him, we may also disobey this Commandment 
by loving and thinking of things in this world 
more than we do of Him. Having no other God 
than the Lord, means having nothing which we 
care more for than we do for Him. When you 
get very much interested in a story book, and 
your mother or father reminds you that you have 
not learned your Sabbath-School lesson, you will 
perhaps find it hard to lay the book down and 
take up your lesson, but you will do it, if you 
really worship the Lord, because you arQ to learn 
about Him, and His Wisdom, instead of merely 
about fairies, and giants, or battles, or whatever 
else it is your story book tells you of. So when 
you become so interested in your games, or plays, 
or toys, that you think of nothing else ' from 
morning to night, you are making a god of some- 
thing besides the Lord. Or, you may make 
a god of fine clothes, and jewelry, and ornaments, 



38 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

by thinking more of them thai! you do of any- 
thing else. Even your school lessons may fill 
your thoughts, and you may be so anxious to get 
a good place in your class, that you may forget 
about the Lord, and cease to worship Him. It 
is right enough to read story books at proper 
times, and to play games, and have nice dolls, 
and playthings, and to get on well with your 
lessons, but you should never forget that the 
Lord is God, and that he made you and every- 
thing around you, and keeps you alive and well, 
so that you can enjoy what you do, and you 
ought to think of Him, and His goodness as much 
as ever you can, and try to always do what you 
know he wants you to. When you do this, and 
remember Him in all your plays and games, you 
are putting Him in your mind, where He ought 
to be, in the highest place, as God over all. And 
when you grow up to be men and women, you 
will not allow yourselves to think of nothing ex- 
cept making money, or having horses and car- 
riages, and fine clothes, or living in fine houses, 
or being great people, but you will try to find 
out how you can best serve the Lord, and do 
what He wants to have you do. 

You must always remember that the Lord, 
whom we are to worship as God, is the Lord Jesus 
Christ. In the Old Testament He is called Je- 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 39 

hovah, winch means : He that was, and is, and 
is to he, but since He took upon Himself flesh 
and blood, by being born on earth as a little 
child, and growing up among men, He is called 
Jesus, which means Saviour, and Christ, which 
means Anointed, or King. In ancient times, 
when kings were crowned or made kings, oil or 
ointment was poured upon their heads, and they 
were then said to be anointed. Jesus Christ, 
then, is a name of the Lord which reminds us 
that He is both our Saviour and our King. He 
is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and 
the ending, which is, and which was, and which 
is to come, the Almighty, (Eev. i. 8.) "All 
power," He says, " is given unto me in heaven 
and in earth," (Matt, xxviii. 18.) "Thou shalt 
call His name Jesus, for He shall save His peo- 
ple from their sins." (Matt. i. 21). 

Whenever you read or think of this command- 
ment, therefore, think of the Lord Jesus Christ 
as the Being to be worshiped, prayed to, and 
loved, above your own self and all things in the 
world. Think of Him as your Saviour, and 
your King, as He who made you and keeps you 
alive, and from whom comes everything which 
you have to make you happy. Try always to 
do what you know He wants you to do, for that 
is the way to show that you really believe in 



40 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Him, and that yon love and worship him as God. 
And particularly, when you think of the rest 
of the Commandments, try to keep them, 
because He has commanded you to keep them, 
and because not keeping them, is a sin against 
Him. It may seem hard to do this at first, but 
the longer you try the easier it will become, and 
you will, by and by, begin to see that the Com- 
mandments were given to make you happy, and 
to make every one else happy. 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 

THOTJ SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD 
THY GOD IN VAIN. 

To take the Lord's name in vain is to speak it 
carelessly, without thinking whose name it is, to 
use it in common talk, and in profane swearing, 
and especially to call upon the Lord to witness 
to the truth of what we know to be not true. 
You will sometimes hear wicked men speaking 
the Lord's name in horrid curses, wishing He 
may do all manner of evil things to themselves 
or others, when they mean nothing of what they 
say, and do not perhaps think what they are 
saying. Sometimes, too, you will hear them 
speak of the Lord as if He was not God, and 
make use of His name to make others laugh at 
what they say, and some people will even stand 
up in court, and solemnly swear by His name to 
tell the truth about something which the judge 
and jury want to know about, and then go on, 
and tell a lie about it. All this is forbidden by 
this Commandment, and we are taught by it 
that we must always use the Lord's name as the 
name of the great and good God, and speak it, 
remembering that He is present and knows every 
word we say. 



42 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

You may, perhaps, wonder why the manner 
of speaking the Lord's name should be of so 
much importance, and why a commandment 
against taking it in vain, should have been given 
from Mount Sinai, with so much solemnity. A 
name seems to be only a word, and, when it is 
spoken, but a breath of air going out of the 
mouth, and you may ask what difference it 
makes how it is spoken. But, as I showed you 
in telling you what Hallowed he thy name in the 
Lord's Prayer means, a name is more than a 
mere word, and when you speak it, you do more 
than give out your breath. Take the name of 
any person you know, and see if, when you speak 
it, or even think of it, it does not bring up to 
your mind all you know about him. If it is the 
name of one of your playmates, you cannot help 
thinking, just how he looks and acts, and, if you 
like him, of all that pleases you in him, or if 
you dislike him, of what displeases you. If you 
have known him a good while, you think of all 
he has said and done to you, and whether you 
think well of it or not. If you hear another 
person speak his name, the same thing happens. 
Everything about him comes up in your thoughts, 
as if he stood before you. It is so with the name 
of your father or your mother. "Whenever the 
names by which you are in the habit of calling 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 43 

them, or hearing them called, are spoken, even 
by other persons, yon cannot help thinking of 
them just as yon do when you see them, and it 
is the same with the names of your brothers and 
sisters, if you have any, and of all your rela- 
tions. 

For the same reason, too, we speak of a man's 
having a good name, or a bad name, according 
as he has behaved well or ill, so that people 
think him a good man or a bad man. To have 
a good name, is to have people think you are 
good, and to have a bad name, is to have them 
think you are bad. No matter how ugly a sound 
a name may have, if you know that the person 
who bears it is good, and if he has been kind 
and loving to you, you never think that it is 
ugly, because you think only of the person, 
while, on the contrary, if he has shown himself 
cross and quarrelsome, and mean to you, he may 
have the prettiest sounding name ever made up, 
and you will hate to hear it spoken. 

The name of a person, therefore, instead of 
being a mere word, is, really, in your thoughts, 
that person himself, and the manner in which 
you speak it shows the manner in which you are 
thinking of him at the time. If you love him 
very much, you will speak it lovingly ; if you 
dislike him, you will show your dislike in the 



44 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

way in which, you speak, and if you do not care 
anything about him, you will show that too. And 
the way in which you speak the Lord's name, 
shows what you think of Him, and if you take 
it in vain, that is, carelessly, or in anger, or 
without thinking who He is, it will show that 
you do not really believe in Him, and worship 
Him as God. For, if you really believed in 
Him and worshiped Him, you could no more 
take His name in vain, than you could speak to 
Him or of Him disrespectfully, if you saw Him 
standing before you. 

This Commandment, too, as you can see, bids 
us not to think of the Lord, as well as not to 
speak of Him, without proper reverence for Him. 
For our words only express our thoughts, and 
what we speak shows only what we think. If 
we are in the habit of thinking vainly, that is, 
disrespectfully and carelessly, about 'the Lord, 
we cannot help speaking His name in the same 
way; so in trying to obey this Commandment 
we must watch our thoughts as well as our words. 
"We must also not only try to think and speak 
properly about the Lord Himself, but also about 
everything that belongs to Him. We should 
always read His "Word, as we find it in the Bible, 
remembering that it is His "Word, and that He 
is in it, speaking to us. Especially should we 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 45 

never make fun of it, or use its texts to make 
people laugh. We should even treat the book 
itself, although it is only leaves of paper, as some- 
thing sacred, because it contains the Word ; and 
never throw it down carelessly, nor allow it to 
get soiled and torn, nor use it to sit on, nor for 
any other purpose than to read out of, that we 
may be taught by the Lord. When we go to 
church to worship Him, and hear His truth 
preached, we should always mind what we are 
doing, and behave ourselves quietly, just as if Ve 
saw Him looking at us. And, particularly, when 
we say our prayers, we should be careful not to 
allow ourselves to do it carelessly, but keep our 
minds fixed on Him, and on His great goodness, 
wisdom, and power. For all these things help 
us to form a correct idea of Him in our minds, 
and so make His name mean more truly to us 
what He really is. And the truer and more 
complete our thoughts are about Him, the less 
likely, of course, we shall be to take His name 
in vain; and if we are careful never to think 
carelessly or disrespectfully about Him, or any- 
thing that belongs to Him, on the least important 
occasions, we shall not be apt to do so on great 
ones. 

The reason why the Lord has given us this 
Commandment, and the use of our keeping it, is, 



46 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

that when we think and when we speak of Him as 
we ought to, and not in vain, we open our minds 
to Him, and so enable Him to help us to put away 
our evils and do good. The Lord is always try- 
ing to help all of us to become good, but He can- 
not do it if we will not let Him. If we deter- 
mine not to try and obey Him, not to pray to 
Him for help, and not to think of Him as God 
at all, we close our minds to all the good thoughts 
He wishes to give us, and turn ourselves away 
fro'm Him. And when we speak out our wrong 
thoughts about Him, we harden ourselves still 
more against Him, because we thus acquire a 
habit of thinking wrongly about Him, and make 
it less easy for us to change ourselves from evil 
to good ways. So that, by taking the Lord's 
name in vain, we say, as it were, that we do not 
want His help, that we will not have it, and that 
we will go on and be as wicked as we please 
without minding Him. 



THE THIED COMMANDMENT. 

REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY. 

We cannot live in this world without working, 
or having others work for us. If the farmer did 
not sow his seeds and raise his crops, we should 
have nothing to eat, and should starve and die. 
Unless we had masons and carpenters to build 
houses, miners to dig coal, wood-cutters to cut 
wood, and men who drive horses and carts, and 
manage railroads, to bring the coal and wood to 
us, we could have no houses and no fires, and 
should perish from cold and storms. "Without 
spinners and weavers, and tailors and dress- 
makers, we should have no clothes to wear, and 
it would be the same with all the rest of the 
things we need. Even the savages, who live in 
warm countries, and eat fruits which grow wild, 
have to do some work to gather these fruits, and 
to hunt and fish ; and they often die of hunger 
because their fruits and game fail them, and, as 
they plant nothing, they have nothing to live 
upon. 

We want, too, more things done for us than 
just enough to keep us alive. We want nice 
carpets and furniture for our houses, horses and 
carriages, plenty of books to read, pictures to 



48 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

look at, handsome dresses to wear, and many 
more things of the same kind, and the only way 
of getting them is for somebody to work and 
make them. Therefore, besides such people as 
farmers, and carpenters, and masons, and black- 
smiths, we have men who do other kinds of work 
for us, printers, who print books and newspapers, 
artists who paint pictures ; goldsmiths and jewel- 
ers ; merchants who send across the sea, and bring 
us tea and coffee, and sugar and spices, and so 
on. Then, too, we want doctors to give us 
medicine when we are sick, and help us to get 
well ; lawyers to keep us from being cheated by- 
bad men ; school-teachers to teach us; and min- 
isters to tell us about the Lord and His goodness 
and wisdom. One works in one way, and one 
in another; and what one cannot do, another 
does for him ; and thus, as you know, the whole 
world is busy from one year's end to another. 
The Lord intended that we should all do this, 
and does not like to see any one idle ; for in this 
very Commandment he says : " Six days shalt thou 
work." Some people think it is very nice and 
pleasant to do no useful work, but they are 
wrong. ISTo one can truly obey the Lord, who 
does no work in the world ; and no one can be 
happy, who lives in idleness all the time. 

But if we all worked day after day, without 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 49 

stopping except to eat and sleep, two bad tilings 
would happen. In the first place, we should 
become so tired out that we should fall sick ; 
and if we kept on, we should die. This has been 
found out by people who have tried it; and 
even those who do not believe in the Lord, 
know that both men and beasts ought not to 
work more than six days at a time, without rest- 
ing. The word " Sabbath " means rest, and the 
Lord commanded us to keep this day of rest, as 
well as to work, that we might not be sick and 
die. But, in the second place, if we kept on 
working without resting, we should never think 
of anything but our work ; and we would forget 
all about the Lord, and heaven, and the life 
after death. Our souls would suffer as well as 
our bodies. The Lord, therefore, has command- 
ed us to keep the Sabbath, not only that we 
may rest, but also that we may, once in seven 
days, at least, stop thinking about this world 
and its work, and think of Him, and learn about 
Him, and about heaven, and so prepare our- 
selves for the life of the next world. 

This Commandment, accordingly, goes on to 
say : " Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy 
work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the 
Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any 
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 



50 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy 
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." 
That is, we must rest on the Sabbath from 
everything like ordinary week-day work. "What- 
ever it is that we do for a business, or for our 
worldly comfort or benefit, we must stop doing 
it then. The farmer ought not to work on his 
farm ; the carpenter, or the mason, at his trade ; 
nor the merchant keep his store open. Children 
ought not to learn their week-day lessons on the 
Sabbath ; nor practice their music ; nor write 
their compositions ; nor do anything else which 
it is their regular business to do on the other 
days of the week. No one, in short, should do 
work on the Sabbath, which he usually does as 
week-day business, bat keep it as the Lord's day, 
and sacred to Him. 

There are some things, indeed, which are 
done on week-days, which must also be done on 
the Sabbath. Our meals must be cooked and 
eaten on that day as well as on others; horses 
and cattle must be fed, and taken care of; in 
winter time, fires must be made in our houses 
•and churches to keep us warm; doctors must 
give medicine to sick people ; and so with other 
work of the same kind. That such work is not 
forbidden by this Commandment, may be seen 
from the example and words of the Lord himself, 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 51 

when He was on earth. He allowed His disci- 
ples to gather corn on the Sabbath, and to pre- 
pare and eat it; and He, many times, healed 
sick people on that day. "When some of the 
Jews found fault with Him for doing these 
things, and thus not keeping the Sabbath day 
as they thought it ought to be kept, He said to 
them, "What man shall there be among you 
that shall have one sheep, and if it shall fall 
into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay 
hold of it and lift it out ? How much then is a 
man better than a sheep ! Wherefore, it is law- 
ful to do well on the Sabbath days." (Matt. xii. 
11, 12.) By this He taught, that any work 
which is necessary to keep ourselves and others 
alive and well, or which is done for the good of 
others, is lawful on the Sabbath. 

The reason that such work as this is not for- 
bidden on the Sabbath is, that, as the Lord 
Himself says : " The Sabbath was made for 
man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark ii. 27.) 
This Commandment was given by Him for our 
own good, and in order that, by resting from 
our work every seventh day, our bodies and 
souls might gain health and strength. Now if 
we allowed ourselves, and our horses and cattle 
to starve, and sick people to die, on this day of 
rest, it would do us harm and not good. Be- 



52 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

sides, the Lord wants us to cease from work on 
the Sabbath day, as I have already said, that we 
may not forget Him, and that we may learn all 
about Him, and about heaven, and what he 
wants us to do that we may come there after 
death; and we could not do this if we were 
cold, and hungry, and sick all that day. 

You can see, too, from this, why we go to 
Sabbath-School, and to church; and why you, 
and your teachers, and your minister have to 
do what seems, I dare say, hard work on the 
Sabbath. It is because the Sabbath was in- 
tended for just this purpose. The Lord always, 
on that day, went into the places where the 
Jews assembled together, and which they called 
synagogues, and taught them about Himself, 
and His laws, and you will find many things 
that he said at such times, written in the Gos- 
pels. And when we assemble together, and 
hear His Word read, it is just as though He 
stood in the midst of us, and spoke to us with His 
own voice. He says Himself : " Where two or 
three are gathered together in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them. 55 (Matt, xviii. 20.) 
So that when you go to Sabbath-School, or to 
church, and learn your Bible lessons, you are 
doing what the Lord wants you to do on the 
Sabbath ; and what He would tell you to do, if 
you could see Him and hear Him speak. 



THE THIED COMMANDMElSTT. 53 

Tou will notice, too, that the Lord says : " It 
is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days," and 
the kind of well-doing he is speaking of, is lift- 
ing out a poor sheep which had fallen into a pit, 
and putting it where it could get grass and 
water, thus saving it from suffering. From 
this we learn, that doing acts of kindness to 
others, such as visiting and comforting sick peo- 
ple, helping the poor, and making other people 
happy in the best way we can, is proper 
Sabbath work. Tou can do something of this 
work by helping to take care of your younger 
brothers and sisters, reading to them and amusing 
them ; and above all, by taking pains to behave 
well, and not make your parents and teachers 
any unnecessary trouble. Tou can do little 
favors for your friends and playmates, carrying 
them books to read that you know they want, 
but do not have ; and by going to see them, and 
doing all you can to make them happy. 

Tou will observe, also, that the Commandment 
does not say which day of the week is to be 
kept as the Sabbath, but only that six days- are 
for work, and the seventh for rest. The Jews 
keep Saturday; but we keep Sunday, because 
that is the day on which the Lord rose again, 
after he was crucified and buried. Because, too, 
the Lord rose on Sunday, it is also called the 



54 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Lord's day. It was on this day, too, that He 
ascended into heaven, and on this day, again, 
He showed himself to John in the island called 
Patmos, as we are told in the first chapter of the 
book of Revelation. 

We keep the Sabbath holy, then, by resting 
on it from our every-day work; by reading, 
studying, and being taught about the Lord and 
His Word, and by doing all we can to make 
those around us good and happy. When we 
employ the Sabbath in this manner, our minds 
become filled with true thoughts and holy feel- 
ings, which remain with us during the rest of the 
week, and help us to overcome our evils, to do 
our duty, and to draw nearer to the Lord and to 
heaven. 



THE FOUKTH COMMANDMENT. 

HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER. 

"When little children first come into the world, 
they are the most helpless of all the Lord's 
creatures. You have seen, I suppose, how they 
have to be taken care of, and washed, and 
dressed, and fed ; how slowly they learn to use 
their eyes, and ears, and hands, and feet ; and 
how long it is before they can walk, and talk, 
and do anything for themselves. As they grow 
up they learn to read and write, and to do other 
useful things, only by being taught by their 
parents and teachers, or some other older per- 
sons, and if they were not helped in this way, 
they would not get along well at all. Then, too, 
it is a good many years before they can work, so 
as to earn money enough to pay for what they 
eat, and drink, and wear, and for a house to live 
in ; and all this time their fathers and mothers 
have to work for them. Just think, how many, 
many times you have to ask your father or your 
mother for this thing, or that thing, which you 
want ; and how badly you feel when you cannot 
get it. Suppose you had no kind father or 
mother, and had to wander about the streets, 



56 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

like some poor little children you have heard of, 
and had nothing to eat, or wear, but what 
strangers gave you. Or, suppose you had no 
one to answer all your questions, and tell you 
what you wanted to know, and buy books for 
you to read. Or, that you had no one to take 
care of you when you were sick, and send for the 
doctor, and do what he says ought to be done to 
take away your pain, and make you well again. 
Can you not see that you would be very misera- 
ble in such a case? I am afraid you do not 
think of it as much as you ought to ; but if you 
will think, you will be very thankful to the 
Lord that he has provided a father and mother 
who love you enough to take care of you while 
you are growing up and learning to take care of 
yourselves. 

Now, because children are so helpless, and 
ignorant, and have to be taught so much, and 
have so much done for them by their parents, it 
is necessary that they should always obey their 
parents. They do not know what is best for 
themselves, and would even die, if they were 
allowed to do as they pleased. You have heard, 
I dare say, of the boy who went into the black- 
smith's shop, after having been forbidden by his 
father to touch any of the pieces of iron he saw 
lying there, because, if he did, he might burn 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 57 

his fingers. He thought he knew better than 
his father, and that iron which was not red hot 
could not hurt him. So he picked up a horse- 
shoe which had just been made, and had cooled 
only enough not to be red, and of course, got 
terribly burned, and found out to his sorrow, 
that it would have been better to obey his father. 
Now you do not always suffer as quickly and 
severely for disobedience as he did ; but you do 
suffer, somewhat, every time you fail to do as your 
father, or your mother bids you, even though 
you may not see it. When you neglect the 
lessons, or the work they set y6u to do, you per- 
haps think it is no matter, but you have really 
missed getting some valuable knowledge, or skill, 
they wanted you to obtain, and after you have 
grown up you will be sorry for it. They tell 
you not to use bad words, or play with bad 
boys and . girls ; and you do it slyly, and are not 
found out, and so escape punishment, as you 
think ; but you are punished for all that, and 
will see it some day, when you try to get rid of 
the bad habits you have formed by using such 
words, and by keeping such company. You 
think, perhaps, that they make you take a great 
deal of useless trouble in learning to wash and 
dress yourselves properly; and to speak, and 
behave as you ought to ; and to keep your 



58 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

clothes, and books and playthings in order ; but 
all these things are necessary for yon to do, and 
yon will be glad, bye and bye, that yon had to 1 
do them when yon were children. And so it is ; 
with everything else which yonr parents and* 
teachers insist on yonr doing. It is all for yonr 
sake, not for theirs, and if yon disobey them, 
yon only hnrt yonrselves. 

It is often very hard, to be snre, for children 
to obey their parents. There are so many 
things which they do not like, which they are 
told they mnst do — and so many things they do 
like, which they are told they must not do — that 
they hate dreadfully to be thus all the time kept 
from having their own way. The Lord, who 
knows all things, knows this, too, very well, bnt 
He also knows how necessary it is that children 
should be made to obey, and, therefore, when 
He gave the Ten Commandments from Mount 
Sinai, He put this one about honoring fathers 
and mothers among them, to show that He 
wanted it kept as much as the others. He wants 
to have you know that when you disobey your 
parents, you disobey Him as well as them, and 
are committing a sin against Him, which is as 
much a sin as any of the others which he has for- 
bidden. So that when you are tempted to act 
contrary to what you have been told — and to 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 59 

do or not do something which your father or 
mother has forbidden or ordered — remember 
that it is the Lord Himself whom you are diso- 
beying. He has said, "Honor thy father and 
thy mother," and when you refuse to do this, 
you refuse to honor Him. 

By " honor," in this Commandment, is meant 
more than merely to obey your father and 
mother, when they tell you to do, or not to do 
anything. It means, that you should respect 
them so much, as to always do as you think 
they would like to have you, whether they have 
told you so in words or not. You know very 
well, that if you want to please any person, and 
have him think well of you, and praise you, you 
do not wait to have him say what he wants be- 
fore you do it. You try and find out, and do it, 
so that he may see that you know what he likes, 
and are willing to do it for him. If you love 
another child, and want to be loved in return, 
you begin by showing him little attentions, 
offering him your books, or toys, and asking 
him to play with you, and when he plays with 
you, you try to make him have a good time. 
You know very well, that if you only did what 
he asked you to, he would not think that you 
particularly cared for him, and he would be 
right. So you do not " honor " your father and 



60 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

your mother, if you only just obey them when 
they speak, and no more. You should think 
how much more they know than you do, and 
how anxious they are that you should be good 
and happy, and how continually they are think- 
ing and working for you, and you should always 
try to give them as little trouble as possible, and 
make the best use you can of everything they 
tell you. 

Nor is it only your father and mother who 
should be thus honored. Tour teachers, both 
in day-school and Sabbath-School, ought, while 
they are busy in teaching you, to be treated 
as your father and mother, for they are put by 
them in their place, and are helping them to 
do the work of bringing you up to be good and 
useful 'men and women. Your parents send 
you to school, because they want you to learn 
many things which they have not time to teach 
you themselves, and to give you a place to 
study where there will be nothing to interrupt 
you, as there is at home. They ask the teacher 
to do for you just what they would do them- 
selves, if they could, and they expect you to do 
for the teacher what you would do for them. 
So that when you break the rules of the school, 
and refuse to learn what is set before you to 
learn, you are not honoring your father and 



THE FOUETH COMMANDMENT. 61 

your mother, and thus not obeying the Lord's 
commandment. So, children, whose parents 
have died, or who have had to go away and 
leave them, must honor those who take care of 
them, because such persons fill the place of 
fathers and mothers, and there is the same 
reason for honoring them, as there is for honor- 
ins: their real fathers and mothers. 

This Commandment, too, is intended not only 
for children, but in a certain way for grown 
people, also. Men and women, indeed, do not 
have to obey their fathers and mothers, as child- 
ren do, for they know how to take care of them- 
selves, and their fathers and mothers do not 
need to tell them what to do, and how to be- 
have, any more. But, still, they have to honor 
and obey the laws of the country, and do what 
they are told to do by the officers of the gov- 
ernment. They have to pay taxes, and, in time 
of war, men have to serve as soldiers and 
sailors, and while they are in this service, they 
have to do just as the general or captain says 
they must. And, above all, they always have 
to honor the Lord, our heavenly Father, in 
everything which they do. For just as your 
father knows what is best for his children to do, 
so the Lord knows what is best for all men and 
women, both on earth and in heaven, and they 



62 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

are all as children, compared with Him. So 
they have to honor the Church, which is the 
whole body of those who love and obey the 
Lord as their spiritual mother. For the Church 
provides for teaching us all, grown people as 
well as children, about the Lord and His laws, 
an,d the way to heaven, and we should love it, 
and be willing to be taught by its ministers, as 
children should love and be taught by their 
mother. 

There is added to this Commandment the 
words, " that thy days may be long upon the land 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The 
Jews understood by the land here spoken of, 
the land of Canaan, to which they were then 
journeying, and supposed that a long life there 
would be the reward of obeying the Command- 
ment. But the land really meant, is heaven, 
which is often called in the Word the land of 
Canaan^ and the promised land; and the prom- 
ise is not of long life in any part of this earth, 
either to the Jews or any one else, but of eter- 
nal life and continual happiness in heaven to 
those who have here honored their earthly 
fathers and mothers, and the Lord and the ; 
Church, their spiritual Father and Mother. 
For, although children who honor their parents 
are no doubt preserved from many dangers, and 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 63 

so are more likely to live to grow up, yet we 
know that the Lord often takes away really 
good children from this earth while they are 
still quite young. Their days are made long in 
the heavenly land where there is no sickness nor 
pain ; and so will yours be, if you shall have 
truly kept this Commandment while you lived 
here on earth. 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 

THOU SHALT NOT KILL. 

It is not necessary to actually kill a human 
being, in order to break this Commandment. 
Murder may be committed in many other ways. 
Whenever you are angry with any one, and 
strike him, or hurt him, or even try to do so, 
you are really guilty of murder. For, if you 
can remember your feelings at such times, you 
will see, that if you had not been afraid of being 
punished, or had been stronger than you were, 
you would not have been satisfied with merely 
giving pain, but would have taken away the life 
of the person you were angry with. Indeed, the 
murders for which men and women are hung, 
are often committed in just such quarrels as 
those in which boys and girls indulge. They 
begin by saying and doing unkind things, and 
from that they come to blows, and at last they 
get so enraged that they use clubs, or knives, or 
pistols, and thus cause death. They did not 
mean, at first, to go so far as this, but their 
angry passions became too strong for them to 
resist. You, too, never can be sure, when you 
begin to quarrel, that you will not end by kill- 
ing the person you quarrel with. You do not 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 65 

know, but that in your rage, you may strike liim 
bo hard, or cause him such a serious injury, as to 
take away his life. And whether you do so or 
not, you are a murderer, if you feel as if you 
would like to kill him if you dared to, or could. 
The only safe way is, to check your anger as 
soon as you feel it rise in your heart. Do not 
even say angry words, or do anything which 
will increase the anger of the person with whom 
you are disputing. For anger is like fire, which 
goes out unless it has something to feed upon. 
If you just shut your mouth, and walk away, it 
will die out of itself. 

There are other kinds of murder, too, than 
merely those that affect the life of the body. 
Whatever is done to give pain to another, from 
a feeling of hatred towards him, is a kind of mur- 
der, though it does not touch his body. For in- 
stance, if from hatred or revenge yoiv make fun 
of a boy's looks, or dress, or way of speaking 
and acting, so as to set all the other boys laugh- 
ing at him, and render him unhappy ; or, 
if from the same motive, you do something 
to distract his attention, and make him miss a 
lesson and get a bad mark, and then rejoice in 
his disgrace, you are in heart a murderer. All 
the teasing and plaguing of others, with which 
children sometimes amuse themselves, if it is 



66 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

done to give pain and to be revenged for some fan- 
cied injury, is, likewise, a kind of murder. For the 
soul can be hurt as well as the body, and unkind 
and disagreeable words wound it, as whips and 
knives do the flesh. If you doubt this, think 
how you suffer yourselves when other children 
tease you, and see if you do not feel pain as real 
as that caused by a blow, or a cut. 

It is murder, too, to tell lies about a person, 
and so make him thought badly of by others, 
when he does not deserve to be. For example : 
suppose you hate a boy, and for the sake of 
being revenged on him, you tell all the boys who 
know him and play with him, that he is a thief, 
and tattle-tale, or has done something else which 
they consider mean and contemptible, and so 
make them refuse to play with him, or have 
anything to say to him. You see that you thus 
take away from him their good will, and, as it 
is said, destroy his reputation with them, and this 
is another kind of murder. Or, if in the same 
way, you make your teacher think that he is 
mischievous and disorderly, and get him blamed 
when he does not deserve it, you also commit 
murder against him. 

A still worse kind of murder is for bad boys 
and girls to lead other boys and girls to do 
wicked things, and become as bad as they are, 



THE FIFTH COMMAXDMENT. 67 

for this destroys the very inmost life of the soul. 
This is what wicked people particularly delight 
to do, and the Lord warns us against their 
efforts when He says : " Beware of false prophets, 
which come to you in sheep's clothing, but in- 
wardly are ravening wolves ; ye shalt know 
them "by their fruits." (Matt. vii. 15, 16.) If poison 
were offered you to drink, you would certainly 
refuse it, no matter how sweet and pleasant you 
were told it was ; or, if you saw that a man had 
a pistol or dagger in his hand, and meant to kill 
you, you would surely run away from him, even 
if he did try to coax you to come within his 
reach. So, when you are tempted by other 
children to steal, or lie, or to take the Lord's 
name in vain, you ought to be just as afraid of 
being murdered, for you will be spiritually mur- 
dered if you do as they want to have you do. 
Much less should you not try thus to murder 
others yourselves, but, on the contrary, you 
should always lead them, if you can, to obey the 
Lord's Commandments, and obtain eternal life ; 
for as He Himself says : " If a man keep my 
sayings he shall never see death." (John viii. 
51.) 

You see, then, that this Commandment forbids 
everything which can injure the soul, as well as 
the body. In the translation of the Bible com- 



68 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

monly used, it reads, " Thou shalt not Mil" but 
this does not give all the meaning of the Lord's 
words. The sin of murder does not lie in the 
killing, but in the hatred, anger, and revenge 
which lead to it. Killing, indeed, is sometimes 
not mnrder, as when it is done by soldiers in 
defence of their country ; or by the officers of 
the law, to prevent a murderer from commit- 
ting more murders ; but the intention to kill ? 
in order to gratify an evil passion, is murder, 
even though no death may result, as you have 
already been shown. To keep this Command- 
ment perfectly, therefore, you must watch all 
your thoughts and actions, and take pains to 
never do anything to harm another in word or 
deed ; and particularly, not to indulge in angry 
feelings against them, from which a desire to 
murder them may proceed. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. 

The Lord lias so made men and women that 
they find their greatest happiness in being 
married. It is written: "From the beginning 
of creation God made them male and female. 
For this cause shall a man leave his father and 
mother, and cleave to his wife. And they twain 
shall be one flesh, so then they are no more 
twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God 
hath joined together, let not man put asunder." 
(Mark x. 6, 9.) There is no love so pure and 
holy as that which unites the husband to his 
wife, and the wife to her husband; and, since 
all happiness comes from love, that produced by 
marriage is the purest and holiest which any one 
can enjoy, either in this world or the next. 
From marriages on this earth, too, children are 
born, who become happy men and women in 
their turn, and, after death, angels in heaven. 
Every angel and spirit was once a child on this, 
or some other earth, and was born from the 
marriage-union of a man and a woman. So 
that, besides affording happiness to' men and 
women on earth, marriage fills the spiritual 
world with inhabitants, and therefore performs 



70 THE TEN" COMMANDMENTS. 

the highest of all uses. The Lord has also 
provided that fathers and mothers should have 
a tender love for their children, and should take 
the greatest delight in watching over them and 
educating them. Do you .suppose that your 
father and mother could be so patient with you, 
and take so much pains to make you happy, 
and to teach you how you must live and act, if 
they did not love you very much indeed ? You 
cannot understand, now, how deep and strong 
their love for you is, but some day, when you 
grow up and have children of your own, you 
will see it for yourselves, and then you will also 
see how this love comes from the marriage love 
of husband and wife. 

But in order that marriage may produce all 
the happiness, and be of all the use for which 
the Lord intended it, it is necessary that a hus- 
band should have no more than his one wife, 
and the wife no more than her one husband. It 
is necessary, too, that after a man and woman 
are once married, they should continue to be 
husband and wife all the rest of their lives. 
For there can be no true marriage, except be- 
tween one man and one woman ; and if hus- 
bands were allowed to leave their wives and 
take new ones, and wives to leave their hus- 
bands and take new ones whenever they got a 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT, 71 

little tired or vexed with their old ones, they 
would never learn to love each other as they 
ought to, and would be miserable, instead of 
being happy. Such a breaking up of a mar- 
riage is called adultery, and, because of the 
mischief and unhappiness it causes, the Lord 
has forbidden it in this Commandment. 

Not to commit adultery, therefore, is, in the 
first place, for a married man not to leave his 
wife and take another ; and for a married 
woman not to leave her husband and take 
another. But, since the sin lies in the breaking 
up of a marriage, everything is adultery which 
is opposed to marriage, or which tends to de- 
stroy it. A man who tries to make the wife of 
another man love him better than her own hus- 
band, or a woman who tries to make another 
woman's husband love her better than his wife, 
is guilty of adultery, though the marriage of 
either is not actually broken. So men or 
women who even only desire to have other 
wives or husbands than the ones they have, but 
do nothing towards getting them, not because 
the Lord has forbidden it, but because they are 
afraid that they will be punished for it, are also 
guilty of this sin. The Lord says : " Whosoever 
looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath 
already committed adultery with her in his 



72 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

heart." (Matt. v. 28). The lust here spoken of, 
is desire and intention, -when not restrained 
because the Lord has forbidden the sin. 

For the same reason, everything partakes of 
the nature of adultery which has the effect of 
unfitting the mind for the enjoyment of a true 
marriage. Improper thoughts about things con- 
nected with marriage, improper words and talk, 
and the indulgence of the passion of love with 
any other object but that of marriage, are more 
or less of this character, and should be avoided 
by every one who is growing up to be a man or 
a woman. You should try and keep yourself 
from all such things, looking to the Lord for 
help to do it, and praying that he will, in due 
time, give you a good and loving married part- 
ner, with whom you may be united for ever. 
The Lord provides husbands and wives for those 
who thus pray to Him, and if they allow them- 
selves to be guided by Him, and keep His Com- 
mandment, they go on becoming happier and 
happier in their marriages continually. For 
husbands and wives, who have truly loved each 
other in this life, are not separated by the death 
of the body, but meet again in heaven, and there 
live together to eternity. 

In the Bible, the Lord is several times spoken 
of as the husband of the Church, and the Church 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 73 

is called His bride and wife. He says once, to 
the Church : " For thy maker is thy Husband, 
the Lord of Hosts is His name." (Is. liv. 5.) 
And He calls the New Jerusalem, which is His 
New Church, " the bride, the Lamb's wife." 
(Rev. xxi. 9.) But when the people who form 
the Church no longer love and obey Him, and 
turn away to other gods, and to do evil, they 
spiritually commit adultery against Him. In 
the book of Jeremiah it is written : " Turn O 
backsliding children, saith the Lord, for I am 
married unto you ;" and a little farther on : 
" Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from 
her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with 
me, O house of Israel." (Jer. iii. 14, 20.) You 
see from this, that the Commandment against 
adultery also requires both men and women to 
be faithful to the Lord, and to love Him and 
keep His Commandments. 

And, because of this marriage of the Lord and 
the Church, it is adultery to mock at the things 
of religion, and to deny the holiness of the 
Word. For by means of what the Church 
teaches us, and especially by means of the truths 
of the Word, we learn to know the Lord and 
become married to Llim — and if we were to 
despise His worship, and to deny that the "Word 
is His book, written to tell us about Him — and 



74 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

still more, if we were to try and so explain it as 
to make people think that it said what it did 
not say, we should separate ourselves from Him, 
as a wife who leaves her husband and goes to 
live with some other man. In keeping this 
Commandment, therefore, we must continually 
think of the Lord as the spiritual husband of the 
Church ; and of the Word, and its teachings, as 
His truth ; and treat them with the respect we 
would show to the words of the being we loved 
above all others. If we do this with our whole 
heart and soul, we shall find it easy to keep the 
Commandment in every other respect ; for then 
we shall allow the Lord to help us, and He, you 
know, has all power. 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. 

To steal, is to take from another, without his 
knowing it, something that belongs to him ; and 
the person who does this in any manner what- 
ever, is called a thief. You have perhaps read, 
or been told, how some thieves steal money slyly 
out of people's pockets in the street ; or goods 
out of stores ; or break into houses at night, and 
carry off silver, and clothing, and everything 
else they can lay their hands upon. "When such 
thieves are caught, they are sent to prison, and 
very rightly, too ; for if they were allowed to go 
on stealing, nobody's money or property would 
be safe. But it is just as much stealing to take 
candy, or apples, or cake, when they do not 
belong to you, and you have no permission to 
take them. The size, or the value of the thing 
taken, makes no difference in the sin. "When 
the Lord commands you, " Thou shalt not steal," 
he means to forbid all stealing, of little things as 
well as big ones, and you disobey Him in steal- 
ing trifles, as well as in stealing things of great 
value. You should think of this whenever you 
are tempted to take anything which does not 
belong to you, without the permission of its 



<0 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

owner, and remember that stealing is not only 
a mean and disgraceful crime, but also a sin 
against the Lord. 

It is stealing, too, to get things away from 
others by any trick or deception, even though 
they actually consent to give them up. A boy 
who sells another a glass marble, pretending that 
it is a real agate, and thus gets the price of 
an agate, really steals from him the difference. 
A shop-keeper, who should take pay from you 
for a pound of candy, and give you only three- 
quarters of a pound, would be stealing from you 
the price of the other quarter. So a boy, who 
should get from his father, or mother, two dol- 
lars to pay for a new school-book, when the price 
was only a dollar and a half, would be a thief as 
to the other half dollar, as much as if he had 
taken it out of a money drawer. Some people 
think it is not stealing to do such things, but 
only smartness, but it is stealing in the sight 
of the Lord, and a sin against this Command- 
ment. 

Other things, too, may be stolen, besides those 
which can be taken hold of and handled, like 
money, and jewelry, and goods. A boy, or girl, 
who should get above another in a class at 
school by using keys, or translations, or any 
other kind of help forbidden by the teacher, 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 77 

would be guilty of stealing the place thus ob- 
tained. Or, if praise should be bestowed upon 
a scholar, by the teacher, for a well prepared 
exercise, or a good composition, which had been 
copied from one written by some one else, it 
would be stolen, because it would have been 
gained when it was not deserved. So it is a 
sort of stealing to give a false excuse for not 
knowing your lessons when you ought to, and 
thus make your teacher think you are less to 
blame than you really are. "Whatever is got in 
the shape of good marks, or praise, or holidays, 
or the good opinion of other people, by dishonest 
means, is really stolen. Tou have got away 
from others, without their meaning to give it to 
you, that to which you had no right. 

Again, you may steal from people things of 
the kind I have just mentioned, without getting 
them yourself. If you were to see a little child 
very happy with a new toy, and should talk to 
him about it so as to make him dissatisfied with 
it, and thus lose all his pleasure in playing with 
it, you would be stealing from him his happi- 
ness without making yourself happy. You 
would take away from him what belonged to 
him without being any the better off for it your- 
self. So, when a school-mate has won a prize 
for scholarship or good conduct, and is very 



78 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

much pleased with his success, his pleasure can 
be stolen from him by making fun of him, and 
telling him that he had done nothing to be proud 
of. This kind of stealing is practised by some 
children, who, I suppose, have no idea of the 
sin they are committing. They take a wicked 
delight in destroying the satisfaction of other 
children, and depriving them of their happiness, 
though they gain nothing themselves by doing it. 
Something like this is the stealing forbidden 
by this Commandment, in its spiritual or inter- 
nal sense, namely, the taking away from people 
of their belief in the Lord, and in the truths 
taught in His Word. There are wicked men 
who try to persuade people that the Lord is not 
God, that the Bible is not His Word, and that 
it is of no use for them to try and obey the 
Commandments, because it will do them no 
good. This is stealing of the worst kind, be- 
cause it takes away from others, things w T hich 
cannot easily be restored to them, and is likely 
to destroy, not merely their happiness in this 
world, but their eternal happiness in the next 
world. When, therefore, you hear any one 
speaking against the Lord, against the Word, 
and against religion, beware of him, as you 
would of a man who was going to steal your 
money or your jewels, for if you were to suffer 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 79 

yourselves to be persuaded by him, you would 
lose something of far greater value than any 
earthly riches. 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST 
THY NEIGHBOR. 

If we never learned anything but what we 
saw with our own eyes, and heard with our own 
ears, or found out for ourselves in some such 
way, without help of any kind, we should know 
very little indeed. How would you learn geo- 
graphy, for instance, or history, or astronomy, if 
it were not for the books written by people who 
have seen the things they describe, and who tell 
you what they have seen? Even the rules of 
grammar, and arithmetic, and algebra, which 
you come to know for yourselves after a while, 
you have to be taught, at first, by persons who 
knew them before you, and who show them to 
you. You read a newspaper, and it tells you 
what is going on all over the world ; and you 
meet your friends and playmates, and they tell 
you what they have done, and what they are 
doing ; and thus, although you are only a child, 
and, perhaps, have never been a hundred miles 
away from home, you know a great deal about 
the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, and what 
people did thousands of years ago, and what 
they are now doing ; and you are familiar with 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 81 

truths of science, which it took many men all 
their lives to find out. 

This telling of things which one knows to 
another who does not know them, is what is 
meant by hearing witness. On this account, 
when two persons get into a law-suit, and go be- 
fore a judge and jury to have it decided, the 
persons whom they bring up to prove the truth 
of their stories are called witnesses. For in- 
stance, suppose the law-suit is about money, 
which one man wants another to pay him, and 
the other man says he has paid it already : if he 
can bring a witness who saw him pay it, and the 
jury believe that this witness speaks the truth, 
they decide that the money need not be paid 
again. If the witness in this case tells a lie, you 
can see that he would bear false witness, and 
would commit a great sin, for he would be the 
cause o£ depriving another man of money which 
he had a right to. This Commandment, there- 
fore, enjoins us to always tell the strict truth 
whenever we are called upon to bear witness in 
court, or to help to decide in any way a dispute 
between two people. If John finds a ball, and 
Charles comes up and says it is his ball, and 
they leave it to you to settle the dispute, you 
ought, if you know which it belongs to, to say 
so, without any regard to which boy you like 
best. You must bear true witness. 



82 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

But this is only one of the many cases to 
which this Commandment applies. As I said, 
nearly all that yon know about other people and 
things is what is told yon, and so what others 
know is made up of what they learn from yon 
and others. Take, for example, the children you 
are acquainted with. You do not see them all 
the time, nor know everything they do, but they 
tell you, and others tell you, what they do when 
you do not see them, and thus you make up 
your mind about them. Suppose, now, you 
were told about a particular child, that he was 
a thief, or that he was mean, or a tell-tale, you 
would be likely to believe it, and not care to be 
friends with him. If the person who told you 
this had lied about it, he would have borne 
false witness against this child, and, as you can 
see, would have done him great harm. ■ This 
kind of false witness is what is called slander, 
and is forbidden by the Commandment. You 
should be careful to never say anything against 
any one which you do not know to be true, for 
what you say is your witness, and if it be false, 
you committed a sin by bearing it. 

For the same reason, it is a sin to tell lies in 
order to save yourself or others from being pun- 
ished by your parents or teachers. When they 
ask you whether you have done something which 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 83 

you were forbidden to do, and yon deny it, yon 
are bearing false witness against them. They 
have a right to know the truth, and if you de- 
ceive them, and make them think that you have 
been good and obedient when you have not 
been, you prevent them from doing their duty, 
and punishing you as you ought to be punished. 
It is the same when you tell lies to save other 
boys from punishment. You ought to tell the 
truth when you are asked for it, because it is 
really for their good, as it is for yours to be pun- 
ished, and thus taught to do right. Telling 
tales when you are not asked to, and for the 
sake of being revenged on a playmate, is another 
thing, for, although it is really no harm to the 
child told of, it is wrong for you to take pleasure 
in his being punished. As to telling lies for the 
sake of having another punished when he does 
not deserve it, and when, perhaps, you deserve 
it yourself, that is a still worse kind of false wit- 
ness, and I hope none of you ever even think of 
bearing it. 

It is wrong, too, to even say that which is 
false, when other people may be deceived by it 
to their injury. Some children think it is good 
fun to scare other children by telling them that 
there is a bug or a spider on them, or that there 
is a wild animal in the closet who is coming out 



84 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

to eat them, or in some other way to frighten 
them. This is wrong, for the children to whom 
yon say these things believe yonr false witness, 
and snffer in their minds becanse of it. And 
even when yonr false stories do not cause any 
harm that yon can see, they may canse some 
that yon do not think of. People take yonr wit- 
ness as true and act npon it, and it may be of 
great injnry to them. If, for instance, you come 
home and say that yon saw a great many black- 
berries in a certain field, when there were really 
few or none, yon might pnt somebody to the 
trouble of going there after them and getting 
tired for nothing. Ton should try to always tell 
the exact truth about everything, and then you 
will do no harm. If others make mistakes, it 
will not be your fault, at least. 

I have mentioned your learning geography, 
and history, and such things from books. These 
books contain the witness of those who write 
them, and you can easily see that if they bore 
false witness how much mischief they would do 
you. Suppose your geography told you that 
Europe lay to the south of this country instead 
of the east, that Boston was only ten miles from 
Chicago, and that I^ew York was in Asia. 
Would you not, when you grow up, if you did 
not find out how false they were beforehand, be 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 85 

likely to get into a great deal of trouble from being 
thus falsely taught ? So if your history taught 
you false dates, or your arithmetic rules which 
always brought false answers to sums, you would 
be in continual trouble. But false witness, in these 
cases, however, produces nothing like as much 
mischief as it does in spiritual things. People 
who write false books, and in other ways try to 
make others believe that the Lord is not God, 
that the Bible is not His "Word, and that it is no 
sin to disobey His Commandments, bear false 
witness in the very worst possible way, for the- 
injury they do lasts beyond the life of the body. 
It is such false witness as this which is forbidden, 
by the interior sense of the Commandment, and 
which the angels always think of when false wit- 
ness is mentioned. These are the lies, too, which 
the Lord particularly means when He speaks 
against lying and lies in the Word, as, for ex- 
ample, when He says that liars have their part 
in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone,, 
and that whosoever loveth and maketh a lie is* 
kept out of the holy city. On the other hand, 
the Lord calls himself " the Amen, the faithful 
and true Witness," (Eev.iii. 14,) and says that He 
came to bear witness to the truth. (John xviii.. 
37.) He teaches us the truth about heaven and 
eternal life, and has said : " Blessed are they that 



86 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

keep His Commandments, that they may have 
right to the tree of life, and may enter through 
the gates into the city." (Rev. xxii. 14). 

By not bearing false witness, therefore, is 
meant always telling the truth about everything, 
no matter how trifling it may be, and no matter 
how much harm it may seem to do you. If you 
obey this Commandment from love and obedience 
to the Lord, He will take care that you do not 
suffer for it, for it is His Commandment, and He 
knows what is good for us better than we do 
ourselves. And the more faithfully you keep the 
Commandment, the more you will be like the 
angels and like the Lord Himself. For the 
angels never lie nor deceive; and as for the 
Lord, I have just told you that He calls himself 
" the Amen, the faithful and true Witness," and 
we can trust him with undoubting faith. The 
word Amen means, as I showed you in speaking 
about the Lord's Prayer, " true," or " the truth." 
And the Lord is the Way, and the Truth, and 
the Life. (John xiv. 6.) 



THE NINTH AND TENTH COMMAND- 
MENTS. 

THOU SHALT NOT COVET. 

The eight Commandments which we have so 
fur gone over tell us what we must not do. They 
tell us that we must have no God but the Lord ; 
that we must not take His name in vain ; that 
we must not break the Sabbath ; that we must 
not disobey father and mother; and must not 
commit murder, adultery, theft, or bear false 
witness. The last two Commandments, now, 
warn us not only not to do these wicked things, 
but also not to desire to do them. To " covet " 
means to desire, and not to covet anything that 
is our neighbor's, is not to desire to do any injury 
to him or to take away anything that belongs to 
him. As the Commandments are given in the 
book of Exodus, chapter xx., the Ninth Com- 
mandment is : " Thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 
bor's house" and the tenth is : " Thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, 
nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor 
anything that is thy neighbors." In Deuteron- 
omy, chapter v., however, the Ninth Command- 
ment is : " Neither shalt thou desire thy neigh- 
bor's wife" while the Tenth is ; " Neither shalt 



58 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his 
man-servant, or his maid-servant, or his ox, or his 
ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's." I shall, 
therefore, speak of the two Commandments to- 
gether, as if they were bnt one, for it is only in 
their spiritual or internal sense that the differ- 
ence between them can be seen, and that sense it 
will not be necessary for me to explain here. 

The reason why, after commanding us not to 
do evils, the Lord goes on to command us not to 
covet or desire what belongs to the neighbor, is, 
that this desire is the cause from which those 
evils proceed. All our sins come from our lov- 
ing ourselves better than others, and wishing to 
do them injury for our own benefit. Stealing 
comes from our wishing to have the money or 
property of others; murder and false witness 
from a desire to indulge our hatred of them ; 
adultery from desiring the wife of another, and 
so on. And, as the Lord Himself is the Neigh- 
bor whom we ought to love most, when we covet 
what belongs to Him, we do not pay Him the 
honor and obedience which He has a right to. 
Evil desires, indeed, are all that make our ac- 
tions sinful, and where they do not exist there is 
no sin. For instance, to kill a person accident- 
ally, or in self-defence, and not from hatred or 
revenge, is not murder, because there is no desire 



THE NINTH AND TENTH COMMANDMENTS. 89 

or wish to murder. So if you take up and carry 
home a book or a toy belonging to another child, 
in mistake, supposing it to be your own, it is not 
stealing unless you keep it after you know whose 
it is. You do not mean or wish to steal, and 
therefore you are not guilty of stealing. On the 
other hand, you may be really guilty of murder 
or stealing, although you have done nothing 
which people can see. You may desire and try 
to commit these sins, and be prevented in some 
way so that you cannot commit them, or you 
may be afraid to do so for fear of being punish- 
ed. But these two Commandments teach you 
that if you have the desire in your heart, and do 
not put it away because it is a sin against God, 
you have sinned as surely as if you had dared, or 
had been able to carry your desire out into act. 

You cannot, indeed, always keep these evil 
desires from coming into your mind. You can- 
not help being angry, at times, or feeling as if 
you would like to take what does not belong to 
you, or in other ways being tempted to break the 
Commandments. The evil spirits who are with 
you delight in making you feel so, and would 
delight still more in making you actually do the 
wicked things they cause you to think of. What 
you can do, though, whenever these thoughts 
and feelings come to you, is to say instantly to 



90 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

yourself: "These are wicked thoughts and feel- 
ings, and I will not act according to them." If 
a man whom yon could see were to ask yon to 
steal or to do murder, or to do any other wicked 
thing, you would not find it hard to say No ! If, 
now, you will only remember that all your 
thoughts of doing wicked things are put into 
your mind by wicked men whom you cannot see, 
because they are no longer clothed with bodies 
like ours, you will find it just as easy to say No ! 
to them. But if you allow yourself to be pleased 
with such thoughts and feelings, and make up 
your mind that you will gratify them as soon as 
you get a good chance, you make them your own, 
and do what these Ninth and Tenth Command- 
ments forbid. You actually desire to commit a 
sin, and this desire is a sin in itself, because it 
will become an act as soon as you can make it so. 
If, again, you refuse to take pleasure in these 
wicked thoughts and feelings ; if, as soon as you 
find you are getting angry, or thinking about 
taking what is not yours, or about breaking 
any of the other commandments, you resist the 
desire, you will find that it will go away. 
For the good angels who are appointed by the 
Lord to watch over you, help you at such times 
to drive away the evil spirits who are trying to 
lead you into sin. All they require of you is to 



THE NINTH AND TENTH COMMANDMENTS. 91 

be willing to be helped, and to join with, them in 
driving out the wicked thoughts which come 
into your minds, and if you will only do this, you 
and they together are sure of the victory. For 
the Lord, too, at such times, comes with His al- 
mighty help, and nothing can stand before Him. 
And when you have done this, the fact that sin- 
ful thoughts have been in your mind does you 
no harm. On the contrary, you have gained 
strength by fighting against them, and they will 
be all the easier overcome the next time they 
show themselves. If you do not believe this, 
just try it. You know that any bad habits can 
be overcome by pains and patience, and cer- 
tainly bad thoughts can also be overcome by the 
same means. 



PART II. 



DOCTRINES OF THE NEW CHDRCH. 



THE LORD THE CREATOR. 

In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth. (Gen. i. l.) 

For in six days the Lord made the 
heavens and earth ; the sea and all that in 
them is. (Ex. xx. 11.) 

By the Word of the Lord were the 
heavens made ; and all the host of them by 
the breath of His mouth. (Ps. xxxiii. 6.) 

For He spake, and it was done ; He com- 
manded, and it stood fast. (Ps. xxxiii. 9.) 

All things were made by Him, and with- 
out Him was not anything made that was 
made. (John i. 3.) 

It is easy to see that the Lord must have made 
the earth, and the sun, and moon, and stars, for 
they are too big or too far off for any man to 
have made them. And yon can also see that the 
Lord makes the grass, and flowers, and trees, and 
men, and women, and children, and all living 



96 THE LORD THE CREATOR. 

creatures, because no man can make anything 
that lives and grows. But perhaps you may 
think that there are some things which men can 
make, as, for example, their houses, their clothes, 
their furniture, books, and the tools they use. 
Yet it is the Lord, after all, who is the Creator 
of even these things. He gives us the strength 
to work, and the mind which learns how to use 
that strength, and the materials which we want 
to work with. We say that men make books 
and newspapers, but it is the Lord who gives 
them the power to write the words. He makes 
the cotton and flax grow, out of which is made 
first cloth, then rags, and then paper. He made 
the metal for the types, and gives the printers 
the skill to put them together, and so, every sub- 
stance that is needed for the book comes from 
Him at first, and all that men do is to change 
its form and put it together in a different way. 
So, when you look around the room and see the 
tables, chairs, carpet and other furniture, the 
curtains and glass of the windows, and iron about 
the fireplace, you see things which the Lord 
created, as much as he has those which grow of 
themselves, as people say. 

The Lord, too, did not make the world and all 
that is in it, and then stop and let it all go on of 
itself. He did not make you as a little baby. 



THE LORD THE CREATOR. 97 

and then let yon grow up without any further 
help from him. He keeps yon alive all the time, 
night and day, summer and winter, year after 
year. When you go to sleep and do not know 
what is happening, he makes your body breathe 
and live, and grow just as he does when you are 
awake. You could not even think, if he did 
not give you the power of thinking from moment 
to moment continually. You eat and drink, but 
it is the Lord who provides your food for you, 
and who makes it become part of your body. 
You go to school, and study and learn, but your 
teachers are only the Lord's creatures, and could 
not do anything for you except by his help. 
Your parents could not take care of you, and pro- 
cure for you what you need were it not for Him. 
So, too, the sun does not shine and give forth 
heat and light of itself, but is onlv a servant of 
the Lord. This earth could not roll on around 
the sun, nor the moon and stars give light at 
night if He stopped making them do it. And in 
fact, but for him, everything in the world would 
cease to exist, and vanish away like smoke in the 
air. The Lord is the Creator of all things now 
as much as He was thousands of years ago, and 
will continue to be so as long as the world lasts. 
If, then, the Lord thus continually watches 
over and keeps in being everything of His crea- 



98 THE LORD THE CREATOR. 

tion, you can well imagine liow great must be His 
love for us all. If you ever had any pet animal 
to take care of, you know that even so little a 
thing as that gave you much care and anxiety. 
What pains fathers and mothers take with only 
a few children, and how much they have to think 
and do to provide them with clothes, and food, 
and schooling ! If you did not love your pet, or 
if parents did not love their children, all this 
trouble would be terribly disagreeable, and it 
would soon cease to be taken. Think now of the 
infinite care and pains the Lord bestows upon all 
the people on the earth ; and not on this earth 
only, but throughout the universe, and in all the 
heavens, and how great his love must be to lead 
him to do it when he need not, unless he loved 
to ! You know that a mother loves her baby, or 
she would not be so patient with it when it 
cries, nor spend so much time as she does in 
washing and dressing it, and hushing it to sleep, 
and so you may know that the Lord loves us 
with an infinite love, because He is so patient and 
kind with us, and does so much to make us 
happy. 

Indeed, it was because of His great love, that 
He created all things. He was so full of love, 
that He could not bear to be without something 
to love. You can partly understand this by try- 



THE LOED THE CEEATOE. 99 

ing to imagine how yon would feel if yon were 
left entirely alone, in no matter how pleasant a 
place. Suppose you were put into a beautiful 
garden, full of all kinds of flowers and fruits; 
suppose there were clear lakes, with gold fish in 
them, and boats floating upon them which went 
of themselves wherever you wished; suppose 
you had plenty of dolls, and toys, and candies, a 
whole library of story books, and the prettiest 
clothes that were ever seen, how long would you 
be happy if you had no other children at all to 
speak to or play with ? I never knew a boy or 
a girl yet who would not be glad to give up such 
a garden, and everything in it, and go out into a 
common field, where there were other boys 
and girls, rather than stay alone. They want 
somebody to talk to, and show their toys and 
books to, and to join with in games. If this is 
so with poor, selfish children, what must it be 
with so loving a Being as the Lord ? He could 
not help wanting to create men and women, and 
placing them in a world where they can be hap- 
py ; and He wants them to love Him in return, 
as fathers and mothers want their children to 
love them. We say, therefore, that love — His 
own infinite, divine love — was the cause why 
the Lord created the world, and all things in it. 
He did it that He might have objects for His 



100 THE LORD THE CREATOR. 

love, and beings wlio could love Him in return. 
When we think of Him, therefore, we should 
think of Him as a Being of infinite love, and 
love Him accordingly. 

But love alone would not have been sufficient 
to create the world. Merely wanting to do a 
thing could not, as you know, bring it about. 
You might want to make a kite, or a doll's dress 
ever so much, and yet, if that was all, it w^ould 
never be made. You must know how, or find 
somebody that did know how, to teach you. 
The Lord had no one to teach Him ; how, then, 
could He do the work of creation ? Simply be- 
cause He has infinite wisdom as well as infinite 
love. He not only loved to create, but knew 
how to do it in the very best way. This you can 
see, if you will only examine the things which 
He has created, or read in books what other peo- 
ple have found out about them. For instance, 
your body is a most wonderful contrivance, full 
of delicate little bones, and veins, and nerves, 
and muscles. The eye, alone, contains wonders, 
which it would take a volume to describe. Just 
look at your hand, and see what a curiously con- 
trived instrument it is, and how many things 
you can do with it. And the same is true with 
everything else. The tiniest little flower, or 
blade of grass, 'will show you, if you carefully 



THE LORD THE CREATOR 101 

look at it, that the Lord, in making it, has shown 
wisdom far exceeding anything we can imagine. 
And then, think how many millions of men He 
has made, and no two of them alike ; how many 
various animals, and trees, and plants there are ; 
and how many fishes in the sea, and how won- 
derfully each one of these is provided for, and 
the Lord's wisdom will be as evident to your 
mind as His love. 

But both love and wisdom would be of no 
avail without power. Wanting to do a thing, 
and knowing how to do it, would be of no use 
without the power to go on and do it. Since, 
therefore, the Lord has created the world, we 
know that He has power, as well as love and wis- 
dom ; and that all three are infinite, you can see 
for yourself. The Lord, the Creator, then is a 
Being of infinite love, wisdom, and power. It 
was His love that made Him create us ; it was 
His wisdom which guided Him in creating us ; 
and He does it from His own infinite power. 
These three — love, wisdom, and power — consti- 
tute what we call the Divine Trinity, and in the 
Bible they are spoken of as Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit. Of this Divine Trinity I will tell 
you more some other time. 



THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR 
SAVIOUR. 

Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the 
Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plen- 
teous redemption; and He shall redeem 
Israel from all his iniquities. (Ps. cxxx. 

7.8.) 

As for our Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts 
is His name, the Holy One of Israel. (Is. 
xlvii. 4.) 

Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Re- 
deemer; Thy name is from everlasting. 
(Is. lxiii. 16.) 

And thou shalt call His name JESUS, for 
He shall save His people from their sins. 
(Matt., i. 21.) 

For unto you is born this day, in the city 
of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 
(Luke ii. 11.) 

To redeem any one is to rescue him, to deliver 
liim from captivity or from prison, or to save 



THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 103 

him from evil and danger. The Lord is called, 
very often in the Word, the Redeemer and the 
Saviour, because He has redeemed and saved 
us, and continues to redeem and save us 
from our sins, and from the misery of hell. 
You know that if your earthly father saw you 
fall into the water, and likely to drown, he would 
run and get a boat, or swim to you and pull you 
oijt. If you were in a house, which was on fire, 
and you could not get past the door, he would 
bring a rope, or a ladder, or something, so that 
you might escape by a window. Or if, like the 
children you have heard about, you were carried 
off into the woods by Indians, he would get men, 
and guns, and swords and horses, and chase them 
and make them give you up. "When he had saved 
you in this way, from drowning, or burning, or the 
savages, he would be your redeemer or saviour, 
and so the Lord is our Redeemer, because He has 
saved us and does save us continually from what 
is much worse than fire, or water, or Indians. 
The Bible says that His name shall be called 
Jesus (which means Saviour), " for He shall save 
His people from their sins." 

Every time the Lord sees you in danger of 
committing some sin, such as stealing, lying, 
getting angry, disobeying your parents, or being 
naughty in any other way, He tries to keep you 



104 THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 

from it, and does keep you, if you will let Him. 
He sends the angels and gives them power to 
make you think you are doing wrong and to 
stop you, and if they cannot stop you at that 
time, then to make you repent and be sorry 
afterwards, and determine never to do so again. 
You only need to yield to the influence of these 
angels to stop very easily, and soon be saved 
from your bad passions. Besides this, you must 
know that whenever you do wrong, or even think 
of doing it, you bring afound you evil spirits, 
who try as hard as ever they can to coax you on, 
and get you to be as bad as you can be. Against 
these evil spirits, the Lord, and the good angels 
sent by Him, fight, and try to drive them away, 
and this they do whenever you help them your- 
selves. Now, are not all these sins, and bad 
passions, and evil spirits, a great deal more to be 
feared than water, or fire, or Indians, and does 
not the Lord deserve to be called your Saviour, 
for saving you from them, for if He did not save 
you from them you would be a great deal worse 
off than if you were drowned, or burned, or car- 
ried away captive? Those things would only 
hurt your bodies, but these would take away 
your heavenly happiness, and make you miser- 
able for ever. 

Besides being our Saviour in this way, by 



THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 105 

means of the angels, the Lord, once in a while, 
has to put forth His almighty power to save us 
in an uncommon and wonderful manner. In 
spite of all that the angels can do, the evil spirits 
sometimes get to be so many and so strong that 
if He did not come down upon them with all 
His might, and drive them away, they would 
kill the bodies as well as the souls of men on 
earth. This happened to be the case about 
eighteen hundred jjsars ago. If you will read 
the New Testament, you will see that about that 
time, the evil spirits, not content with merely 
making men w T icked, had got into the habit of 
throwing them into the fire, or into the water, 
or, they would make them go and live among 
the tombs and cut themselves all the while with 
sharp stones, or they would take away their 
powers of seeing, and hearing, and speaking. It 
was well known what was the matter with these 
miserable people. They were said to be "pos- 
sessed of a devil," and there were more of them in 
Judea than in any other country. If this had 
been allowed to go on, very soon these devils 
would have overrun the whole world, and de- 
stroyed every human being in it. 

In order to save men from this danger, it was 
necessary that the Lord should take upon Him- 
self a body like that which the devils were at- 



106 THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 

tacking. As I have said, you cannot be saved 
now unless yon help the angels to fight for you, 
and so neither could men be saved then unless 
they helped the Lord themselves. But they 
had grown to be so wicked that they scarcely 
knew that there was such a Being as the Lord, 
and the evil spirits would not let them learn, 
and unless they could see Him with their eyes 
and hear Him speak, they could not know what 
to do to help Him. Besides this, He wanted a- 
body like ours to fight with, just as your father 
would want a boat to save you if you were 
drowning far from shore, or a ladder if the win- 
dow of the burning house in which you were, 
was high up, or guns and swords to fight the In- 
dians with. So He was born a little baby, as we 
read in the Gospels, and grew up as any other 
baby does to be a man, and then he set to work to 
save the people. How He did this we are told 
in the Gospels. 

In the first place, He went to work and drove 
away the devils who were tormenting the bodies 
of men. He went about, up and down, all over 
Judea, where they were worst, and cast them 
out by His divine power. They did not like this, 
you may be sure, and fought and begged hard 
to be allowed to stay. Once, you remember, 
there was a whole legion of them in a man, and 



THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 107 

He gave them permission, when they went out 
of him, to enter into a herd of swine, and when 
they had done it they made the whole herd rash 
down into the lake and drown themselves. If 
the Lord had let them, they would have drowned 
as many men just as easily. Then the Lord heal- 
ed all the sick people who had become so by the 
workings of these evil spirits. He made the 
blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the 
lepers clean. He fed the poor people, too, who 
had nothing to eat, and so altogether broke up 
the power of the evil spirits on earth. 

At the same time that He was thus redeeming 
men's bodies He redeemed their souls. He talk- 
ed to people and told them what they must do 
in order to be good and happy, and you will find 
all that He said to them about it written in the 
Gospels. He had it written in those books that 
we and all other people might read it and so get 
as much good from it as if we had lived when 
He spoke it, and heard it ourselves. But as the 
people of that day did not read books much, He 
sent men called apostles to preach to them, and 
get them to try and resist the evil spirits, not only 
when they wanted to hurt their bodies, but also 
when they tried to lead their souls into sin. These 
apostles received power from the Lord to cast out 
devils just as He did, for after He had done so 



108 THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAYIOTTR. 

much of this work, He could give them power to 
do it, too. But now this is no longer necessary, 
and by means of the printing press, Bibles have 
become very plentiful, as you know, and nearly 
every little child is taught to read, and we have 
churches, and ministers, and Sabbath-Schools, and 
these are our apostles, because they tell us just 
what the old apostles used to tell people in their 
time. 

In these two ways, then, the Lord became our 
Redeemer. He fought the devils who had pos- 
session of men's bodies, and drove them away, 
and He taught people the truth by which to help 
them drive the same evil spirits out of their 
souls. You must not think it was a very easy 
task though. The whole of the devils in hell 
were up in arms. They tried to conquer the Lord 
and destroy Him. First they tempted Him to 
sin that they might get Him into their power. 
The fourth chapter of Matthew tells how they 
did this and how they failed. Then they tried 
to kill His body by stirring up wicked people to 
kill it wherever He went. He defeated them in 
this, too. Then they attacked Him in the spirit, 
and they made great drops of bloody sweat come 
out upon His forehead with the pain they caus- 
ed. Last of all they got the Jews to crucify 
Him, and this He let them do, because His work 



THE LORD THE REDEEMER, OR SAVIOUR. 109 

was nearly finished, and He knew that they were 
conquered, and that it was necessary for Him to 
suffer this kind of death in order to complete 
our redemption. 

Since the time the Lord first showed Himself 
on earth, as I have told you, and conquered the 
evil spirits, He has had to fight them again, very 
much in the same way as then, only the battle 
took place in the spiritual world, where men 
here could not see it. This happened about a 
hundred years ago, at the time of what we call 
the Last Judgment ; and we can read all about 
it in the books written by Emanuel Swedenborg, 
whom the Lord allowed to see it that he might 
let us know of it. In the chapter upon the 
Second Coming of the Lord, which you will find 
further on, I will tell you more of what Sweden- 
borg says about this. 



10 



THE HOLY TRINITY. 

Go ye therefore and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them into the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Matt, 
xxviii. 19.) 

No man hath seen God at any time : the 
only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, He hath declared Him. (John 
i. 18.) 

That all men should honor the Son even 
as they honor the Father. He that honoreth 
not the Son honoreth not the Father which 
sent Him. (John v. 23.) 

But when the Comforter is come, whom I 
will send unto you from the Father, even 
the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from 
the Father, he shall testify of me. (John 
xv. 26.) 

He breathed on them and saith unto 
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost (or 
Spirit). (John xx. 22.) 



THE HOLY TRINITY. Ill 

In telling yon how the Lord created all things 
from infinite Love, guided by infinite "Wisdom, 
and using infinite Power, I said that these three, 
Love, "Wisdom, and Power, are the Divine 
Trinity, which is spoken of in the Bible as the 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word Trinity 
means something threefold, or made up of three 
things, and when we say the Trinity, we mean 
the Lord, because He is the first and highest 
Trinity. 

Tou will get a clearer idea of this Trinity in 
the Lord by seeing how it exists in yourself. 
For the Bible says, " God created man in his 
own image: in the image of God created He 
him? (Gen. i. 27.) You are therefore an 
image of the Lord ; that is, you are like Him, 
except that He is God and you are his creature, 
and except also that your evils and sins have 
very much spoiled the likeness. Still it is 
enough of a likeness to help you understand 
many things in regard to Him, and especially 
this one of the Trinity. 

As in the Lord, so in yourself, love is what 
makes you do everything you do. You can see 
this plainly enough in the case of the things 
which you like, or, as you may well say, love to 
do. It is the love of the taste of food which 
makes you eat, and of the pleasure of drinking 



112 THE HOLY TEINITY. 

which makes yon drink. Yon play with yonr 
dolls and toys, and with other children, and read 
nice story books for the same reason. And so, 
with regard to all other things which children 
love to do. It is their love for them which 
makes them do them. But how is it with what 
they are made to do when they do not love to, 
as they say, such as sewing and hemming, and 
other such tiresome work, learning hard lessons, 
and going to school when they would rather 
play? It does not seem as though love had 
much to do with such things, but it does. When 
you do a long dull piece of sewing, you do it, if 
you are good, to please your mamma, and be- 
cause you love her, or if you are not good, be- 
cause you want to get some reward she has 
promised, or avoid some punishment she has 
threatened. So when you study lessons you do 
not like, you either do it to please your parents 
and teachers, or to stand high in the class, or 
because you want to escape getting bad marks 
or being kept in. If you did not have any love 
at all, either for others or for yourself, you would 
not care whether you did it or not, and would pay 
no attention to it. And so, if you will carefully 
consider every act of your life, you will find that 
some love is the origin of it. Now all these 
loves, taken together, form, as it were, a kind of 



THE HOLY TEESTITY. 113 

center, from which, everything in both your soul 
and body receives its life and activity. In fact, 
we may say that your loves are your life itself, 
since without them you would have no life, and 
in the Lord Love is also His very life. As one 
of the apostles has said, God is Love. 

All these loves, or, to speak of them as one 
united whole, this love, cannot be gratified with- 
out some effort. You must do something, or else 
your love will not give you any pleasure. But 
before you do anything you must first think 
what you are going to do, and how you will set 
about it. When you are hungry and thirsty 
you begin to think what you want to eat and 
drink, and how you shall get it. When you 
want to play you have to think where your toys 
are, and which ones you will choose. When you 
feel like reading, you have to make up your 
mind which book you will take. And so when 
you are to do any work or learn any lesson, you 
first think about it. Some children think about 
some things a long while before they begin, and 
think, too, more how they may gratify their love 
for not doing them, than how to obey their 
parents and teachers. They make all kinds of 
excuses, and sometimes even tell lies, to get off 
from doing what they do not like, so that they 
may do what they do like. Every love, there- 



114 THE HOLT TEmiTY. 

fore, gives rise to a thought, and usually to a 
great many thoughts, about the thing loved, and 
as the Lord's thoughts about what He loves are 
His divine wisdom, so your thoughts are your 
wisdom — not a very good kind, perhaps, but still 
something. 

When, therefore, your love for a thing has set 
you to thinking how you may do it, and thus 
called out the best wisdom you have, you next 
try to do what you love, and then you find the 
need of power to do it. Power does not mean 
mere strength to lift and move things. That is 
only one kind of power. It means everything 
which enables your love and wisdom to do what 
you want to do. When, you want something to 
eat, and go and ask for it, you exert the power 
of speaking, and sometimes you exert it a great 
deal, and beg very hard for what you want. 
When you go to play you exert all the powers of 
your body, not only in running and jumping, 
but in using your hands and fingers. When 
you study your lessons you exert your power of 
remembering, and cyphering, and finding out the 
meaning of words. If you had not all these 
kinds of power what would be the use of loving 
or thinking about things ? You know how badly 
off a poor cripple is who has no legs. What 
then would you be if you were without the 



THE HOLY TRIOTTY. 115 

power of using your legs and arms, and eyes and 
ears, and all the other parts of tlie body, or if you 
had not the power of learning lessons or reading 
books ? Your love and wisdom would do you no 
good whatever. And so the Lord must have 
Power to do what His Love impels Him to do, 
and what in His wisdom He knows how to do. 
This Power you may see, if you will, all around 
you. He uses all things to do what He wants to 
do. " All power" He says, " is given unto me 
in heaven and in earth /" (Mat. xxviii. 18,) and as 
the disciples said when He walked on the sea, 
" Even the winds and the sea obey Him" (Matt, 
viii. 27.) 

This trinity of love, wisdom and power in 
every man, woman and child, is also seen in 
many other ways than those I have spoken of. 
All your loves dwell in what is called the will, 
and all your thoughts in the understanding, or 
intellect, as some call it, that is, the thinking 
part of the mind, and so we have a trinity of 
will, understanding and power. Then again, the 
whole soul uses the body as love does wisdom, or 
the will, the understanding, and that makes a 
trinity of soul, body, and the power which both 
•together exert. Lower still, we have in every- 
thing, even a stone, a trinity of the substance of 
which it is composed, the form it wears, and the 



116 THE HOLY TRINITY. 

use it serves, which is its power. Heat produces 
light, and by the two together the Lord makes 
all animals and plants live and grow. And so 
you will find this Trinity, which in the Lord 
exists in the highest form, exists also in every- 
thing which He has created. 

If, now, you have understood what I have 
been saying, you will be able to comprehend 
why this Trinity is called* in the Bible the 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The divine Love 
is the Father, because it is that principle from 
which the others proceed, and which supports 
them and gives them life. If there were no 
divine Love, there could be no divine Wisdom 
nor any divine Power. The divine Love is also 
the Father of every man, and of all things in 
creation, because they are kept in being by it. 
The divine "Wisdom is called the Son, because it 
is born of the divine Love as a Father, as your 
thoughts are born of, or come from, your love. 
This Wisdom is also called the Word of God, be- 
cause wisdom, or thought, is expressed by words, 
and the Word of God expresses His divine Wis- 
dom. Therefore we read in the Gospel accord- 
ing to John ; " In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God. The same was in the beginning with God. 
All things were made by him; and without him 



THE HOLY TBETCTY. 117 

was not anything made thai was made" (i., 1, 3.) 
''And the Word was made flesh cmd dioelt among 
us, cmd we beheld His glory, the glory as of the 
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth" (14.) Here you see the Word of God, 
by which all things were made, is called the 
" only-begotten of the Father." It is also said 
that He " was made flesh and dwelt among us," 
which happened, you know, when the Lord 
showed Himself on earth. His Wisdom, or di- 
vine Thought, thus took on flesh and blood, and 
was seen by men. 

The Holy Spirit is the name given to the Di- 
vine Power, as it proceeds from the Divine Love 
and "Wisdom, or the Father and the Son. The 
word " spirit " means air or breath, and as your 
breath goes out continually from your body, so 
the Lord's Power goes out continually from Him. 
Thus we read in the same Gospel of John. 
" Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto 
you / as my Father hath sent me, even so I send 
you. And when He had said this, He breathed on 
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost" (xx. 21, 22.) " Ghost " is the same as 
" spirit," and you see that Jesus, who was the 
Divine Word or Wisdom, " sent " or proceeding 
from the Father, or Divine Love, "breathed" 
on the disciples, to show them how this Holy 



118 THE HOLY TRINITY. 

Spirit went -forth from Him. He says in other 
places, " I and my Father are one" (John x. 
30.) " I am in the Father, and the Father in \ 
rrie" (xiv. 11.) to let ns know that the Divine 
Love is never separated from Divine "Wisdom, 
and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both to- 
gether. And because all three are united in 
Him, He commanded His disciples to baptize 
men, " into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (Matt, xxviii. 19.) 
That they understood this to be the name of the 
Lord Himself, is seen by the fact, that when 
they came to baptize men, they did it in the 
name of Jesus Christ. (Acts ii. 38; viii. It ; 
"Romans vi. 3.) 

When we think of the Divine Trinity, there- 
fore, we should think of it as the three great 
things in the Lord. We speak of them as if 
they were separate from one another, but they 
are not ; and we should always remember that 
they are united, and form one, as our own Love, 
Wisdom, and Power, or Will, Understanding, 
and Power, are united in each one of us. 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURE, OR THE 
WORD OF THE LORD. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was God. (John i. l.) 

By the Word of the Lord were the heavens 
made and all the host of them by the breath 
of His mouth. (Ps. xxxiii. 6.) 

Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in 
heaven. (Ps. cxix. 89.) 

Man doth not live by bread only, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of the Lord doth man live. (Deut, viii. 3. 
Matt. i\\ 4.) 

The words I speak unto you they are 
spirit and they are life. (John vi. 63.) 

His name is called, The Word of God. 
(Rev. xix. 13.) 

In explaining to yon why the Divine Trinity 
of Love, Wisdom, and Power, is also called in 
the Bible the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I 



120 THE SACRED SCEIPTURE. 

mentioned that passage in the Gospel of Jolin 
where the Divine "Wisdom or Thought of the 
Lord is spoken of as " the "Word," and it is said 
that it is God, and that " all things were made 
by it," and that it " was made flesh," and " we 
beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father." Now yon know that we call the Bible 
" the Word," and perhaps yon wonder why we 
do so, and how the Bible can be the same thing 
as the Son or the Divine Wisdom, and how it 
was made flesh. Let us see if we can under- 
stand this. 

Whenever you wish to tell other people how you 
think or feel about anything, you do it some- 
times by looks, sometimes by motions, but often- 
er by speaking. For instance, you may show 
that you like or dislike anything by looking 
pleased or cross ; you may threaten to strike by 
lifting up your hand, or you may consent or re- 
fuse to consent to do what it is asked of you by 
nodding or shaking your head. But by speak- 
ing out in words you show your thoughts plainly, 
and without risk of being misunderstood, as 
your looks or motions might be. Your words 
are your thoughts put into forms in which other 
people may see them and know them, and, if 
they are true words, they may be called your 
thoughts themselves. You may indeed say what 



■ THE SACEED SCRIPTUEE. 121 

yon do not mean, or what yon do not really 
think, and then yonr words will be lies. Bnt if 
yon always say what yon do mean and think, 
those who hear yon know what is in yonr mind 
as well as yon do yonrself. 

Words, too, express things and actions as well 
as thoughts. The word which is the name of 
any object, as horse or tree, calls up in the mind 
the image of a horse or tree, and makes you 
think of it. So by means of words yon may 
tell what yon have done to others and what 
they have done to yon, and thus make a 
picture before the mind of the person you are 
speaking to, of what you wish him to know, as 
plainly as if he had seen it himself. And if 
you were to sit down and tell him all you had 
ever done and thought, and what you were now 
doing and thinking, truly, and without keeping 
back anything, he would know just what kind 
of a boy or girl you were. This is the way in 
which you come to know others, and in which 
they know you. You put together all they have 
ever done or said, as far as you know it, and 
what they have told you of their thoughts and 
feelings, and thus form your idea of them. They 
do the same by you, and so does everybody by 
everybody else. Now all this knowledge is ex- 
pressed in words and words contain it. 
11' 



122 THE SACRED SCRIPTURE. 

In the same way the words of the Lord, writ- 
ten in the Bible, tell us what kind of a Being 
He is, and we call them the Word, because they 
are so much better and holier than the words 
which any created man ever speaks. If you 
will take up your Bible, and look through it, 
beginning at Genesis, you will see that it not 
only tells us what the Lord did, but that it says, 
every little while, "And God said" " And the 
Lord said" "And God spaJce all these words" 
" Thus saith the Lord" " The word of the Lord" 
and in the four Gospels you find scarcely anything 
else than what the Lord did and said to the people 
and to His disciples. You can see plainly enough 
how everything which is written as having thus 
been said and done by the Lord Himself, should 
be His "Word, and how it expresses His divine 
thoughts, but you will probably ask how is it in 
regard to things which are written as having 
been said and done by men, as David, for in- 
stance, in the Psalms, and by the wicked people 
of whom we read in various places ? 

To answer this question, I need only to 
remind you of what I have just now told you 
about words expressing thoughts and actions, 
and how by the use of them you can tell just 
what kind of person you are. Now the Lord 
wishes to tell us this very thing. He wishes to 



THE SACRED SCEIPTUEE. 123 

let us know how loving and how wise He is, and 
since to merely say that He is loving and wise, 
would give us only a faint idea about Him, He 
has caused to be written a history of what He 
has done for us from the beginning of the world 
down to His own coming in person to the flesh, 
and, in the book of Revelations, a prophecy of 
things now taking place. When we read this 
history, whether it contains what He said or 
what others said, or whether it tells what He did 
or what others did, it is still His "Word, because it 
gives an account of Him. For, many of the 
people who appear to speak only their own 
thoughts, as David and the prophets, were 
told by Him what to say, and thus it was the 
same as if He had said it. And what wicked 
people said and did is His word, because He 
commanded it to be written, and because it is 
necessary for us to know it in order to under- 
stand Him better. If you were telling of the 
bad behavior of another person to you and how 
kindly you had treated him, you would have to 
tell ail he said and did, in order to show what 
you had said or done, and to give to others a 
true idea of you, and so the Lord has caused to 
be written down much that bad men have said 
and done, that we may know what kind of men 
they were, and why He treated them as He did, 



124 THE SACRED SCRIPTURE. 

The Bible, then, is a picture of the Lord's 
Wisdom or Thought, as it is shown in what He 
has said and done to men ; and it is His Word, 
as much as what we say about ourselves is our 
word. It is, therefore, the Son, or only begot- 
ten of the Father, because it contains the wis- 
dom which has proceeded from a Divine love, 
as*a son is born of a father. And as the Lord 
created the world by means of His Wisdom, and 
this Wisdom is shown to us in the Word, so it is 
said that by the Word all things were made that 
were made. And since, too, Love cannot show 
itself except by thought or wisdom, so when the 
Lord wished to show himself to men on earth, it 
was the Word, or his Divine Wisdom, which 
was made flesh, and dwelt among them. You 
could not show your love to any one except by 
means of thought. If you loved a person ever 
so much, you could not make him know it un- 
less you could either speak or make signs which 
he could understand, or do something in some 
other way to convey your thoughts to him. So 
the Lord made use, first, of the written Word, 
and then of the Word in the flesh, to make us 
understand what He is, and how He loves us. 

If you had a dear friend far away, somewhere 
across the ocean, and you received every little 
while a letter from him, you would read it over 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURE. 125 

and over, and learn from it just what lie was 
doing and thinking of, and thus form to yourself 
an idea of him, as if you saw him. Now the 
Lord is not far off, as such a friend might be, 
but close to you, and yet he cannot show Him- 
self to your eyes, because you would be dazzled 
and blinded by the sight. But He has caused 
the "Word to be written in a book, that you may 
read about Him, and think of Him ; and He 
has made the world and all things in it, which, 
as I have said, He also did by His Word, that 
you may see for yourself how good and how 
wise He is. The Word in the Bible and in 
the works of creation both, equally, tell us of 
the Lord's character, and both are the Lord's 
Divine Wisdom. And ■> this Divine Wisdom, 
acting from Divine Love, assumed, for a short 
time, flesh and blood like ours, and " we beheld 
His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of 
the Father, full of grace and truth." Now, how- 
ever, this flesh and blood has been made divine, 
and it is only in what we read about it in the 
Word that it again appears to us. 

The Word, therefore, is the Lord's thoughts, 
or His Divine Wisdom, expressed in words, that 
you may know Him, and think of Him truly. 
From Genesis to Revelation, it is a history of 
Him ; and if it is read as it ought to be, it will 



126 THE SACRED SCRIPTURE. 

open your mind to Him, and bring Him near to 
you in your thoughts, and thus help you to be- 
come better and holier, and more like Him. 
And when it commands you to do some things, 
and not to do others, listen to it, as you would 
if the Lord Himself stood before you and spoke 
to you. For what He speaks, He speaks from 
Love to you and to every one else, and He 
speaks it that you may love Him, and be forever 
happy in being loved by Him. 



THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE 
WORD. 

The words I speak unto you, they are 
spirit and they are life. (John vi. 63.) 

All these things spake Jesus unto them in 
parables; and without a parable spake He 
not unto them. (Matt. xiii. 3.) 

Unto you it is given to know the mysteries 
of the Kingdom of God, but to others in 
parables. (Luke viii. 10.) 

I have before told you how the Word shows 
us the Lord's character, and gives us an idea of 
Him, as our own words show our characters to 
other people, and give them an idea of us. In 
doing so, I spoke of the Word as being a history 
of what the Lord has said and done to men, and 
of what men have said and done to Him ; and 
perhaps you may think from this, that it is just 
like a history of Washington, or some other great 
man, and means no more than we find in it, by 
reading it as we would read any other book. 



128 THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WOED. 

But the "Word, unlike all other books, was 
written by the Lord Himself, not with His own 
fingers, but by telling men exactly what to put 
down, and therefore it is His work, not man's 
work, and contains a great deal which no book 
written by a man ever could contain, or does 
contain. 

The difference is the same as that between all 
the other works of the Lord and those of men. 
For instance, the real flowers which the Lord 
makes grow, are very much the same to look at 
as the artificial flowers on a bonnet, but you know 
that the likeness is only on the. outside. Real 
flowers are made up of beautiful delicate little 
leaves and fibres, which, when they are seen 
through a magnifying glass, are still more beau- 
tiful and delicate, while artificial flowers are 
cut out of paper, or wax, or silk, and when look- 
ed at carefully, even with the eye alone, show 
their clumsy shapes, and ragged edges, and the 
places where the paint is put on, and where they 
are fastened together. Cut a real flower open, 
and you will find little cells and ribs, tiny seeds 
in the seed-vessel, golden drops of honey, and 
many other curious things, while inside of an 
artificial flower there is nothing but cotton, or 
something else of that sort. So, a toy rabbit or 
dog, looks like a real one on the outside, but it is 



THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WOE.D. 129 

only fur stuffed with sawdust or wool. It can- 
not eat or drink, it has no bones or flesh, and its 
eyes are only glass beads. A picture, too, of a 
landscape, or a man, differs from the real thing 
in the same way. When you have once looked 
at it, you have seen all that is to be seen, and 
when you come very close to it, its beauty is all 
lost. So, books written by men, tell you only 
what men know about anything, while the Word 
tells you what the Lord knows; and, as men 
know but a very little when compared with the 
Lord, what they say is equally little. When you 
have once read and understood their words, 
there is no more to be learned from them, but 
the more you read and study the Lord's Word, 
the more you find in it, just as the more you ex- 
amine a real flower, the more you find in that. 
And the reason is, that the Word, besides the 
meaning which first appears, has many other 
meanings lying hidden within it, which are not 
seen till it is studied in the right way. 

When you take up the Word and read it, 
merely paying attention to what you can under- 
stand of it, as you understand other books, you 
•only get the first or outside meaning of it, as you 
see only the .outside of a flower when you look at 
it from a distance. This outside, or what is the 
same thing, this external sense, is indeed very 



130 THE ESTEKNAL SENSE OF THE WORD. 

good and beautiful, and tells you a great deal 
about the Lord that is true, and gives you an idea 
of Him which you can get from no other book. 
It shows you how kind and loving He is, and 
what He has done for you, and what He wants 
you to do, that you may be happy, both here 
and in heaven ; and when you think of it, you 
should think of it as being the Lord's Word, not 
man's, and as most sacred and holy. But within 
this external sense there is another, which we call 
the internal or spiritual sense. We call it inter- 
nal because it is within, and spiritual because it 
tells of spiritual things. It is as much more 
wonderful and interesting than the external 
sense, as the inside of a flower is more wonderful 
and beautiful than the outside. 

This internal sense cannot be understood with- 
out a knowledge of what are called correspond- 
ences. All the men, animals, and things of every 
kind, described or spoken of in it, correspond to, 
or represent spiritual things, so that while the 
external sense tells us of what was said, done, and 
seen, on this earth, the internal sense tells of 
corresponding spiritual things. Externally, the 
Word is a history, as I have said before, like 
any other history, but internally it is an ac- 
count; first, of the Lord's church on earth, 
and the changes which have taken place in it ; 



THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WORD. 131 

second, of the way in which the soul of each 
man becomes fitted for heaven; and third, of 
how the Lord, or the Word, became flesh, and 
saved us from the power of hell. 

These three things make what are called the 
three degrees of the internal sense of the Word, 
and each one of them contains more knowledge 
than any man or angel can learn by studying the 
Word to eternity. We can all of us, however, 
learn a little of it, and to help us to do so, the 
Lord has revealed to Emanuel Swedenborg a 
knowledge of these correspondences, which had 
been for a long time lost and forgotten by men, 
and showed him how to use it in explaining the 
Word. Swedenborg has, accordingly, in the Ar- 
cana Celestia, given us some idea of the internal 
sense contained in the books of Genesis and 
Exodus, and how much more there is in the in- 
ternal sense than there is in the external, you 
may see from the fact, that the explanation of 
these two books alone makes ten times as big a 
book as the external sense of the whole Word ? 
Besides this, Swedenborg has also explained the 
internal sense of the Eevelation of John, and 
parts of the other books of the Word, and, 
when you are old enough, you can, by reading 
what he has written, and learning correspond- 
ences, study the internal sense for yourself, and 



132 THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WORD. 

perhaps find out some things which lie has not 
said anything about. 

One very interesting fact which Swedenborg 
tells us about the internal sense of the "Word, 
and which it will be useful for you to know, is, 
that when any person on earth reads the Word, 
believing in its holiness and sacredness, the an- 
gels are aware of what he is doing, and although 
he may not know the internal sense, or be think- 
ing about it, they know it, and, as he reads, per- 
ceive it as clearly as he does the external sense, 
and take great delight in it. This delight is 
communicated to the interior or hidden parts of 
the reader's mind, and make him also happy, 
and thus it is that good people find it so pleasant 
to read the "Word. Swedenborg says, too, that 
when children read it as they ought, the angels 
take particular pleasure in coming to them in 
this way. They are drawn to them as you are 
drawn to a lovely garden when the sun shines on 
it, and makes the flowers give forth their sweet 
smell. The Word is thus, by means of its inter- 
nal sense, a way by which heaven and the angels 
are brought near to you, and you may thus be in 
heaven among the angels in your spirit while 
your body is still on earth. 

[In the copies of the Bible which are commonly used 
now-a-days, there are printed, in addition to what is truly 



THE INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WORD. 133 

the Lord's Word, other writings which are only the work of 
men, and, consequently, have not a divine character. " The 
books of the Word in the Old Testament are, the five books 
of Moses, the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the two 
books of Samuel, the two books of the Kings, the Psalms of 
David ; the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, 
Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 
Nahum, Habakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah, Mala- 
chi : and, in the New Testament, the four Evangelists, Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Apocalypse," (or Eevela- 
tion. A. C. 10,325.) The reason why other books came to 
be mixed with these, and thought to be equally the Word, 
was that men, in Swedenborg's time, had lost all knowledge 
of the internal sense, and could not therefore tell what was 
the Word, and what was not the Word. 



CORRESPONDENCES. 

And let them make me a sanctuary, that 
I may dwell among them. According to all 
that I shew thee ; after the pattern of the tab- 
ernacle, and the pattern of the instruments 
thereof, even so shall ye make it. (Ex. xxv. 

9-) 

For upon all the glory shall be a defence 

(or covering). Is. iv. 5. 

1 

The internal sense of the Word, I told you, is 
only to be understood by a knowledge of corres- 
pondences ', and I think I had better explain to 
you more fully what correspondences are. I 
cannot do this so that you will know all about 
them, for that no one can ever do. I can only 
give you some idea of them to help you think 
about them, and set you to studying and reading 
about them for yourself. 

Words, you know, are the names of things, 
and when you say a word which some one else 
hears, and understands, it makes him think of 



CORRESPONDENCES. 135 

the thing whose name it is. "When you speak of 
a horse or a tree, or a flower, those who hear 
you, if they have ever before seen a horse, or the 
kind of tree, or flower yon mention, see it again, 
as it were, in their minds, and think of it as you 
do, and so it is with everything else of that kind. 
"When, too, you describe in words how one boy 
struck another, how a girl danced, or how a 
house burned down, if you know how to do it 
properly, those who hear you see the whole affair 
in their thoughts the same as you do, and thus, 
by means of words, you can give them an idea 
of things which they have not actually seen with 
their own eyes, and make them think of them as 
if they had. In this way whole books have been 
written, giving a history of things which have 
been said and done for years and years, and the 
Word, in its external sense, is such a history of 
the world from its beginning. 

But there are a great many things which we 
think and talk about, which cannot be seen and 
felt of, as you would see and feel of a horse, or a 
tree, or a flower, and yet you know that they 
are real things. Can you measure love with a 
thermometer ? Can you drink truth out of a tum- 
bler ? And yet you know that love is real heat, and 
makes you feel warm towards those you love, 
and that when you want very much to know the 



136 CORRESPONDENCES. 

truth about anything, and some one tells it to 
you, or you read it in a book, you drink it in as 
you do water when you are thirsty. Now, in 
order to describe love, or truth, you have to use 
words which also describe things which can be 
seen and felt by the body, and those who hear 
you know what you mean, because they know 
that heat corresponds to love, and water corres- 
ponds to truth ; that is, that love in the soul is 
the same as fire in a room, and that truth to a 
person who very much desires to know it, is the 
same as water to a thirsty man. And when you 
say that you are warmly attached to such a 
friend, or that such a boy or girl treats you 
coldly, they know that you are not speaking of 
heat or cold which can be measured by a ther- 
mometer, but of spiritual heat and cold, which 
is love or hatred. Or, if you say of a book or 
a sermon, that it is dry, they understand that 
you do not care for the truth that is in it ; not 
that it needs to be dipped in water, and made 
wet. 

So, when you want to describe other feelings 
and thoughts of your mind, you use words that 
are the names of corresponding feelings and ac- 
tions of the body. Suppose you have gone to 
your father or mother to get something which 
you think they will give you as soon as you ask 



CORRESPONDENCES. 137 

for it, and they refuse you. Do you not feel as 
if you had run against a post in the street ? Or, 
when you go up in a friendly way to speak to 
some one, and he turns his back upon you, and 
will have nothing to say to you, is it not as if 
you had received a blow % You have been sud- 
denly stopped in doing what you expected to do, 
and you feel, as you say, stunned, or hurt, and if 
you knew what the word meant, that you had 
been rebuffed or beaten back. Here again there 
is a correspondence between states of the mind 
and states of the body, and the same words can 
be applied to the one that are applied to the 
other. 

In the same way that actions of the body cor- 
respond to actions of the mind, the things which 
men make with their hands correspond to the 
things which they make with their minds. 
"When you sit down and think how you can do 
something you want to do, you say you are lay- 
ing out jour plans, as if you were making a map 
of them. . You have an idea of what you are .go- 
ing to do all marked out in your mind, as if it 
were drawn on paper. When a boy tells you 
something which you know is not true, you say 
it is a made-up story, as if he had made it with 
his fingers. And you know what sharp words 
are, and hard sums. Words spoken in anger are 



138 COEEESPONDENCES. 

spiritually knives and daggers, and a sum diffi- 
cult to do, is a hard mental knot to be untied. 
And when yon come to learn more about words, 
yon will find that everything made by the mind 
is described by a word which also describes some- 
thing made by the body. 

Now, just as in the case I have mentioned, 
things which you can see and feel correspond to, 
and represent things which cannot be seen and 
felt, so everything in the world corresponds to 
something of a spiritual nature. The sun cor- 
responds to the Lord ; its heat to His Love, and 
its light to His Truth. For truth is not only 
spiritual water, but is also spiritual light, and 
helps you see thoughts, as the light of the sun 
helps you see everything around you, and love 
is spiritual heat, for it warms your spirit and 
gives it life. The moon corresponds to the 
knowledge which we have of the Lord as a mat- 
ter of belief alone, because it merely reflects the 
light of the sun without its heat. If you only 
Jcnaw about the Lord, and do not love Him, and 
do not receive His love into yourself, you have 
only moonlight, while if you both believe in Him 
and love Him, and love to do what He tells you 
to do, you have Him as a sun in your soul, giving 
you both light and heat. The stars correspond 
to the various other knowledges of heavenly 



CORRESPONDENCES. 139 

things wliicli men have, and which give no heat 
and but little light. This earth where we live 
corresponds to that part of our minds which con- 
tains our thoughts about the things of tnis natu- 
ral life, while all the trees, plants, animals, and 
men on it correspond to other thoughts, and the 
affections derived from them. What the corres- 
pondence of each particular thing is, you must 
learn by studying the writings of Swedenborg, 
where a great many correspondences are ex- 
plained, and where you can get the rules which 
will tell you how to find out those which he has 
not explained. All I want to do now is to show 
you what they are like, so that when you hear 
them spoken of, you may know what people 
mean. In general, it may be said that corres- 
pondences are the spiritual meanings of things. 
Everything which can be seen or touched, or in 
any other way can affect the body, corresponds 
to something which can be felt or thought of by 
the soul, and everything which can be felt or 
thought of by the soul corresponds to something 
which can affect the body. 

You can see now, from what I have said, why 
the Lord, who made all things, and knows per- 
fectly their correspondences, should have used 
them in writing His Word. He did so in order 
that the Word should not only describe what 



140 CORRESPONDENCES. 

took place before men's eyes, and was heard with 
their ears, but, also, that by means of corres- 
pondences, it should tell us of spiritual things. 
Every man spoken of in the Word, and all that 
it says happened to him, and was said by him, 
will teach us if we learn to understand it, by 
learning correspondences, something spiritual, 
either about our own souls, or about the Church, 
or Heaven, or the Lord Himself. And what is 
wonderful, we can never learn all that it can 
teach us in this way, because being written by 
the Lord, it contains all His Wisdom, and our 
wisdom can never equal His. 



FAITH. 

I am the resurrection and the life. He 
that belie veth in Me, though he were dead 
yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in Me shall never die. (John xi. 
25, 26.) 

If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die 
in your sins. (John viii. 24.) 

Ye believe in God, believe also in Me. 
(John xiv. 1.) 

He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved, but he that believeth not shall be 
damned. (Mark xvi. 16.) 

When the Lord was on earth redeeming and 
saving men, He told them over and over again 
that they must believe in Him to be saved, and 
some of His sayings on this point I have given 
yon above. The sick people, also, who came to 
be cured had to believe in Him before He cured 
them. For example, he asked the two blind men 
who asked Him to restore their sight ; " Believe 



142 FAITH. 

ye that I am able to do this ? " (Matt. ix. 28.) 
and He said to the woman who touched the hem 
of His garment. "Daughter, be of good com- 
fort, thy faith hath made thee whole." (Matt. 
ix. 22.) When Peter tried to come to Him by 
walking on the water, and began to be afraid, and 
to sink, He cried out " Lord, save ine," and then 
the Lord stretched forth His hand and caught 
him, and said to him " O thou of little faith 
wherefore didst thou doubt?" (Matt. xiv. 30, 
31), and it is likewise said, that He could 
not do many mighty works in His own country 
"because of their unbelief" (Matt. xiii. 58.) 
All this teaches us that we must lelieve on the 
Lord, or, as we also say, we must have faith in 
Him before He can save us from evil and danger, 
and give us the good He desires to give to us. 

In order to believe, or have faith in the Lord, 
you must first of *all know that He is the Al- 
mighty God, the Creator of the world and the 
Saviour of men. It is plain that you cannot be- 
lieve anything until it is shown to you in some 
way, and you could not believe on the Lord if 
you did not know who and what He is. This is 
the reason why He has given us the Word in 
which are written so many things about Him, 
why you go to Sabbath-School to be taught, and 
why I have explained so many things about Him 



FAITH. 143 

to yon. All that I have said about His love, 
wisdom and power, abont His creating the world 
and keeping it in existence from moment to 
moment, and what lie has done, and still is doing 
to save us from Hell and bring us to Heaven, 
and everything elser relating to Him, is for the 
sake of teaching you how to think rightly about 
Him, and thus render you able to believe on 
Him as you ought. The more you know about 
the Lord the better you can believe on Him, 
because you have a truer idea of Him. 

But merely knowing the truth about the Lord 
is not having faith in Him. You might learn 
all that has ever been told us about Him, and 
be able to repeat it all perfectly, and yet you might 
not really believe it. Tou might think within 
yourself that perhaps it is true and perhaps it is 
not, and that at all events you do not care whether 
it is so or not. You might say, when you were 
asked the question, that the Lord is God, and that 
His Commandments ought to be obeyed, and yet 
you might secretly fancy that you yourself deserve 
more love than He does, and that it is no matter 
if you do break His Commandments. Now, in 
such a case, it is clear that you would have no 
real faith in what you know, for if you had, you 
would think of the Lord as your Creator and 
Saviour, and would pray to Him to help you keep 



144 FAITH. 

His Commandments, and do your best to keep 
them. This continually thinking of the Lord 
as God, and looking to Him to help you to live, 
so that you may come into Heaven, is what He 
means by believing on Him, and you must have 
this faith in Him or He cannot save you from 
hell and bring you into heaven. 

One thing more, however, is still needed. Not 
only must you know the truth about the Lord, 
and think of it as true, but you must also do 
what He tells you to do. Suppose you are very 
sick, and. in great pain, and want to become well 
again. The doctor comes and tells you what 
medicine to take, and what you must not eat 
and drink, and what else you must do to get 
well, and then asks you, do you believe what I 
say ? Now you may answer, Yes ! but if you lie 
still and do not take the medicine, and go on 
eating and drinking as you did before, and in 
other ways disobey the doctor, you would clearly 
show that you did not really have faith in him, 
and for want of faith, in him you would not get 
well. For if you really had faith in him, you 
must set to work immediately to follow his advice 
and be cured. So if you were in a burning 
house, and there was no way of getting out but 
by a high window, under which your father 
stood, ready to catch you in his arms, and he 



FAITH. 



145 



told yon to jump ; if you really had faith that 
your father could catch you and savd you from 
striking against the ground, you would jump at 
once and escape; but if you did not jump, you 
would show that you did not believe that your 
father could catch you, and so you would be burnt 
up. Now, the Lord, like the doctor, and like 
your father, tells you what you must do to get 
well of your spiritual sickness and to be saved: 
from hell, and you must have faith in Him, and. 
do as He says or you cannot be cured and saved. 
There are three things, thus, necessary to faith 
in the Lord. First, knowing the truth about 
Him, second, thinking of this truth as the truth, 
and third, doing what it teaches you to do. You 
come to know the truth by reading the Word 
and studying it, and by its being taught you by 
your parents and Sabbath-School teachers, and, 
the more you study and learn of it, the purer and 
better will be the faith which you can acquire. 
You begin to believe the truth when you resolve 
that you will obey it because it is what the 
Lord teaches, and think of Him as God ; and 
you have real living faith when, in every action 
of your life, you do just what the Lord would 
have you do. "When you have this faith you are- 
sure to be saved, for the Lord has said so, as you: 
well see by the texts which I have put at the be- 
ginning of this chapter. 



CHARITY AND GOOD WORKS. 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. 
(Deut. vi. 5 1 . Lev. xix. 18. Matt. xxii. 37, 
39. Luke x. 27.) 

All things whatsoever you would that men 
should do to you do ye even so to them. 
(Matt. vii. 12.) 

Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me. (Matt. xxv. 40.) 

What doth the Lord require of thee but 
to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God. (Micah. vi. 8.) 

The word " charity," means love, and charity 
towards others, therefore, is love towards them. 
People often speak of charity as if it meant no- 
thing but giving money to poor people, but that 



CHARITY AND GOOD WORKS. 147 

is only one kind of charity, and sometimes, as 
when it is done merely to get rid of a beggar, it 
is not charity at all. Charity, really, is loving the 
Lord and all our fellow creatures, and we show 
it when we try to obey the Lord because we love 
Him, and to do good to everybody around be- 
cause we love them. For the neighbor, whom 
the Lord bids us love, is everybody within our 
reach, to whom we can do good. 

Scarcely any one, now-a-days, is so born that 
he can have charity without trying very hard 
for it. We almost all love ourselves so much 
better than we do others, and our own pleasure 
so much more than we do the Lord, that we do 
not even know that it is wrong to do so until we 
are told. Tou see very little children snatch 
things out of each others' hands, and quarrel with 
one another for toys, and candies, and cakes, and 
cry if they are not allowed to do as they please, 
and if they were not taught that they must not 
do so, and learn to do better, they would grow up 
to be thieves and murderers. Indeed, all the 
evil and wickedness in the world comes from 
people's loving themselves, and their own pleas- 
ures better than they do the Lord and their 
neighbors. Just think what a happy world this 
would be if every one loved the Lord above all 
things, and obeyed Him perfectly, and loved 



148 CHAEITY AND GOOD WORKS. 

every one else as lie did himself, so that he took 
as much pains to do good to others as to himself. 
But since this is not so, and we are all by nature 
evil and selfish, the Lord teaches us that we must 
have charity, and how we may get it. 

The first step towards getting charity is to 
have faith in the Lord, for, as I showed you when 
speaking about faith, we must believe in the 
Lord before we can receive any good thing at 
all from Him. Besides, how could you love the 
Lord if you did not believe that He is God and 
ought to be loved ? And if you did not believe 
in, and love the Lord Who is so good and great, 
and Who continually does so much for you, how 
could you love those around you, who, as you 
know, do not always behave kindly to you, and 
semetimes vex you very much. It is only by 
thinking of the Lord and of his Commandment 
to love others, that you can bring yourself to act 
towards others as you ought to. So that there 
can be no true charity without faith in the Lord, 
and we must have this faith before we can have 
charity. 

Tou know what knitting work is, and car- 
penter work and other kinds of work. What- 
ever any one does, whether with his hands, or by 
speaking, or by thinking, is his work, — a good 
work if it is done from faith in the Lord, and 



CHARITY AND GOOD WORKS. 149 

charity towards others ; and a bad work if it is 
done from selfishness and hatred of others. From 
the time you get up in the morning, therefore, 
until you go to bed at night, in learning and say- 
ing your lessons, in the way you behave at the 
table, in your games and plays, and in all your 
words and actions, you are doing either bad or 
good works. The Lord says: "Behold, I come 
quickly, and my reward is with me to give every 
man according as his work shall be." — (Rev. 
xxii, 12.) The reward of bad works, you know, 
is punishment, and the reward of good works is 
happiness, both in this world and in Heaven. 

Charity, too, is as much shown in not doing 
evil works as in doing good ones. Indeed, no 
one can have true charity who does not take as 
much pains not to do evil as to do good. What 
sort of charity would you show towards your 
brothers, and sisters and playmates, if one minute 
you spoke and acted rightly with them, and the 
next minute struck them and called them names, 
or broke, or took away their books and toys? 
You well remember that, in speaking of the 
Commandments, I showed you that they nearly 
all told us not to do wicked things, and, as in do- 
ing the good works of charity it is necessary to 
obey these Commandments, you see that you must 
be as careful not to do wrong as to do right. 



150 CHARITY AND GOOD WOEKS. 

But charity, like faith, amounts to nothing un- 
less we act according to it. As I showed you, in 
speaking of faith, it is of no use for yon to say 
that yon believe in the Lord if yon do not do as 
He commands yon. Yon must obey His Com- 
mandments if yon would be saved, and your faith 
saves you only when you obey. Your faith in the 
doctor cures you only when you take his medi- 
cine and do as he bids you ; and your faith in your 
father saves you from the burning house only 
when you obey your father, and jump into 
his arms, as he tells you to. And so it is of no 
use for you to wish to be very loving and. affec- 
tionate towards other people, if you go right on 
and do unkind and wicked things to them. If 
you really try to love your father, and mother, 
and playmates, you will always do what is right 
to them. You will honor your father and mother, 
and not get angry with your playmates, nor 
strike them, nor take away what belongs to them, 
but treat them as the Lord has commanded you 
to treat them — that is, as you yourselves would 
like to be treated by them. Whatever you thus 
do from faith in the Lord and charity towards 
others, is called good works, and by means of 
them both faith and charity become real things, 
and not mere words and feelings. 

Now, if from faith in the Lord, and love or 



CHARITY A.KD GOOD WORKS. 151 

charity to others, you try in every thing that yon 
do to obey the Lord, and do, not evil but good, to 
your neighbors, you will find that your faith 
and charity both grow brighter and stronger. 
At first, it is hard to believe in the Lord and 
obey Him, and to do to others only what is right 
and good, but it becomes easier as you go on, just 
as reading or any kind of study becomes easier 
after you have been doing it some time. When 
you first began to read, you had to pick out every 
letter and syllable and put them together slowly, 
and you thought it was terrible hard work, but 
now is it not easy enough and pleasant enough 
to read, especially if the book is a nice story- 
book ? It is so with arithmetic, and piano-play- 
ing, and every thing else of this kind. " Practice 
makes perfect," it is said, and if you practice the 
good works of charity, you will at last learn to 
do them easily, and finally love to do them. So 
that the way to obtain charity is to do its good 
works from faith in the Lord. 



REPENTANCE. 

Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand. (Matt, iv., 17.) 

Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish. (Luke xiii, 3.) 

That repentance and remission of sins 
should be preached in His name among all 
nations. (Luke xxiv, 47.) 

Be zealous, therefore, and repent. (Rev, 
iii, 19.) 

To repent means to change one's mind. You 
know that sometimes when you are asked why 
you have not done something you said you were 
going to do, you answer that you have " changed 
your mind," meaning that you have changed 
your intentions. The repentance spoken of in 
the Bible is a repentance from sin — that is, a 
change of mind in regard to sin, or a determina- 
tion not to commit it any more. Merely to be 
sorry for having done wrong is not repentance. 



REPENTANCE. 153 

You must also make up your mind not to do so 
again, and set yourself to work to avoid it. It is 
of no use to be sorry and then go right away and 
do the same thing, for which you are sorry, over 
again ; and indeed, unless you truly repent of it 
and stop doing it, you will cease to even be sorry 
for it. Tou know that people who have become 
thieves and murderers very rarely feel sorry for 
their crimes. They become hardened, as we 
say, because they have gone on so long without 
truly repenting. 

Every little while you ought to sit down and 
think over all the wrong things you have done, 
and say to yourself that they are wrong, because 
the Lord has forbidden them, and then make up 
your mind not to do them any more. At the 
same time you should pray to the Lord to help 
you keep this in mind, and to do as He wishes 
you to do. If you thus repent and pray to Him, 
He will help you, and the good angels who are 
with you will also help you, and the next time 
you are tempted to do wrong, if you will only 
think of what you said to yourself and to the 
Lord when you repented, you will find it easy 
not to commit the sin again. And so, if you 
continue to repent, that is, to change your mind 
from the intention of doing evil to the intention 
of not doing it, you will at last be freed from 



154 REPENTANCE. 

/ 

even the desire of doing evil. This is what is 
meant by the "remission of sins," which the 
Lord spoke of to the disciples as following re- 
pentance (Luke xxiv. 48). " Eemission " means 
" sending back," and when you, by repentance, 
put away the evil desires which led you to sin, 
they are sent back to hell from whence they 
came, and you are thus freed from them. 

Since, too, repentance is a change of intention, 
you must examine your intentions as well as 
your actions in doing the work of repentance. 
For, you may have intended and tried to do 
wicked things but have been prevented from doing 
them by fear of punishment, or of what others 
would say of you. You may have hated 
another person so as to wish to kill him, or, at 
least to hurt him very much, but have been 
afraid of being punished, or of being struck and 
hurt in return. So you may have intended to 
steal something but have seen, or thought you 
saw, somebody looking, and so have stopped, not 
because you were going to commit a sin, but 
because you thought you would be found out. 
All such intentions should be repented of as 
much as actual sins, for they are sins in the 
sight of the Lord, and if you do not repent of 
them, they will lead you into sinful acts the 
first chance they get. 



REFORMATION AND REGENE- 
RATION, 

" Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God " (John iii., 3). 

This is what the Lord said to a good and wise 
Jew named Nicodemus, who came to him one 
night to be taught. When JSTicodemus wondered 
at it, the Lord said to him again, " Except a 
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can- 
not enter into the kingdom of God." To see 
and to enter the kingdom of God, is to come 
among those who love and obey the Lord as their 
king, that is, to come into heaven. Before we can 
do this, the Lord tells us, as He told Nicodenius, 
we must be born again, or as it is usually said, 
must be regenerated^ which means the same thing. 

This new birth, you can see, is a birth, not of 
a new body, but of a new soul. No one becomes 
a little baby again and grows up a second time 
on the earth, but if we obey the Lord's Com- 
mandments there is born within our first soul a 
new soul which is of a higher and better kind, 



156 REFORMATION AND REGENERATION. 

and fit for heaven, which our first soul is not. 
This is why the Lord says, " Except a man be 
born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter 
into the kingdom of God," and then adds : 
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and 
that which is born of the spirit, is spirit." 
Water and spirit here mean truth and the love 
of truth, as shown in a life according to it, while 
flesh means our natural evil desires. How the new 
soul is born of truth and a good life, and not of 
our natural evil desires, I will try to explain to 
you. 

You "know that you yourself and every one 
else you see around you have, at times, all kinds 
of bad thoughts and feelings. Sometimes you are 
very selfish, and want to have everybody else do 
just what pleases you. You want to keep your 
own toys and books to yourself, and yet make 
others lend or give you theirs whenever you take 
a fancy to them. You get angry and quarrel, 
and strike when you are opposed. You dislike to 
obey your parents, to go to school and learn your 
lessons, and to go to Sabbath-School and to 
church, and to be taught about the Bible and 
about religious things. And, for this reason, your 
character and disposition are so unlike those of 
the angels, that, without a change, you could 
not live happily with them, nor belong to the 



REFORMATION AND REGENERATION. 157 

same kingdom as they do. Now, I do not mean 
that you are altogether wicked and bad, and 
never do what you ought to do, but you wish to do 
wicked things very often, indeed, and find that 
it is hard work for you not to do them. The 
reason is that your first soul, which is born at 
the same time with your body, is of such a nature 
that you cannot help wishing to do evil, and this 
soul would, if it were left to itself, go to hell and 
not to heaven. 

In order, then, that we may come into heaven, 
the Lord has given us His Word, and the truths 
which it contains, to help us form in ourselves a 
new soul, like those of the angels. This soul, as 
He says, is born of water and of the Spirit, that 
is, of the truths of His Word and a good life. 
For instance, our first soul leads us to steal, to 
murder, to bear false witness, and to commit all 
the other sins you have heard of. But the Ten 
Commandments tell us to resist its leading, and 
refuse to commit these sins. Now, if, whenever we 
are tempted to commit any sin, we think of the 
truth as contained in the Commandments, and 
in obedience to it, refuse to do the wicked act, 
so much of the first soul as leads us to do that 
act is killed, and a new desire, which is the de- 
sire of obeying the Lord, is formed, and helps to 
make in us a new soul. So, the next time we 



158 REFORMATION AND REGENERATION. 

are tempted to commit that, or some other sin, if 
we refuse to do it, in obedience to the Lord's 
truth, we kill another wicked desire, and get a 
good one in its place. And thus we go on 
through life, little by little, killing the old soul 
which we get with our bodies, and raising a new 
soul within us, which is of a heavenly nature, 
and belongs to the Lord's kingdom instead of 
hell. 

You can understand this better by thinking 
of yourself as a garden, which contains nothing 
but weeds, but which you wish to have filled 
with beautiful flowers. The first thing to be 
done is, plainly, to pull up the weeds and plant 
flower seeds. But you cannot, at first, pull up all 
the weeds, and even when you think you have got 
through, you find new ones springing up, and if 
you do not keep all the while at work pulling 
them up as fast as they appear, your flower seeds 
will be choked and killed. But at last, when 
you have got rid of all the weeds, and the flowers 
have grown up, you have what you were trying 
for. Just so, you will, if you go to work and 
keep on working as the Lord tells you to in His 
Word, rooting up all the evil desires which com- 
pose your first soul, and planting the good affec- 
tions of obedience to Him, you will at last get a 
new and good soul. 



REFORMATION AND REGENERATION. 159 

Of course this work of being born again, or 
regenerated, is a slow one, and lasts usually all 
one's life. No one, as long as lie lives in this 
world, can say that he is entirely regenerated. 
But we can all do something towards becoming 
regenerate, and when we go into the spiritual 
world, and come closer to the angels, we are 
enabled by the Lord to complete the work, and 
thus enter His kingdom of heaven. But if we 
do nothing towards it here, and do not even 
begin to have a new soul born within us, then 
we cannot enter heaven, but remain among those 
who have also no other desires but their natural 
wicked ones. For no one goes to heaven who 
does not want to, and if we love nothing but evil 
here, we shall love nothing but evil after death, 
and shall hate the angels and get as far away 
from them as we can. 



BAPTISM. 

Go ye therefore and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them into the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 
xxviii. 19.) 

These words the Lord spoke to His disciples, 
just before He went out of the sight of men on 
earth, at the time of His First Coming. The 
command, though given only to those particular 
disciples, was meant for all who should after- 
wards become His disciples, everywhere and at 
all times, just as the Ten Commandments given 
to the Jews, were meant for the whole world. 
How the first disciples went about teaching and 
baptizing, you know, and you know that this 
same work is kept up at this day. We have 
ministers whose business it is to teach people to 
live a good life, and who baptize all who are 
willing to be baptized. You can see the use of 
teaching, but that of baptizing is not so plain, 
and I wish to try and tell you what it is. 



BAPTISM. 161 

" Baptizing " means bathing or washing, and, 
therefore, when a minister baptizes any one, he 
sprinkles or wets his forehead with water. He 
also says, at the same time, that he does it " into 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Spirit." It means the washing of the 
soul, and it is intended to remind us that just as 
the body is made clean by water, the soul is to 
be made clean by doing what the Lord teaches. 
For the soul gets soiled and black by sin, just as 
the body does by rubbing against dirt, and the 
only way we can cleanse it is by using the truth 
which we know, to drive away the wicked 
thoughts and passions which stain it. And 
when our souls are thus washed, we come " into 
the name of the Fatherland of the Son, and of 
the Holy Spirit," that is, we come into the 
knowledge and enjoyment of the Lord's Love, 
Wisdom, and Power, and are really His children, 
and have a right to be called by His name. Bap- 
tism itself does not do this, but it is a sign that 
it needs to be done, and is a promise on our part 
that we will try to do it. 

Children are baptized, therefore, in the first 
place, because the Lord has commanded it. He 
said that " all nations " should be baptized, and 
this includes children as well as grown people. 
Baptism itself, means, that those who are baptized 



162 BAPTISM. 

must be washed from their sins and live pure and 
holy lives so as to be the Lord's children, and be 
worthy to be called by His name. "Whenever 
you think of your baptism, then, or see other 
persons baptized, you should remember that the 
Lord has commanded you and them to be bap- 
tized as a sign that you and they are to be His 
children, and that He expects you to live accord- 
ing to His Commandments. But, besides this, 
baptism has another use which it is well for you 
to know. 

The Church, as I shall explain to you more 
fully hereafter, is the Lord's family on earth, com- 
posed of all those who believe on Him and try 
to live as He tells them to. All who belong to 
the Church on earth are, at the same time, a part 
of the Lord's family in heaven, and though they 
do not see the angels, nor the angels them, they 
are constantly with the angels, and the angels 
with them. Now one use of baptism is, that 
those who receive it are marked by it as belong- 
ing to the Church on earth, both so that they 
and other people here know it, and so that the 
angels know it too, and can better help them to 
live so as to come into heaven after death. When 
little children are baptized, angels are appointed 
by the Lord, whose special business it is to watch 
over them and keep them from going wrong. 



BAPTISM. 163 

Tlie Lord lias provided that the minister's calling 
the child by name, wetting his forehead with 
water, and repeating the words He has com- 
manded to be used, shall make it known 
in heaven that the child belongs to His fam- 
ily, and as soon as this is done, some good 
angel immediately goes to him and keeps the 
evil spirits, who desire to harm him, away from 
him, and tries to lead him to heaven. 

This use of baptism is very much like that 
of the uniform which soldiers wear, that it may 
be known to what army they belong. In time 
of battle when a soldier sees another soldier with 
a uniform on like his own, he knows that he 
must help him, not fight against him, but when 
he sees a man without any uniform, he cannot 
tell what to think, and might, perhaps, kill him 
by mistake. So angels know that baptized chil- 
dren and people are to be taken care of by them, 
but they cannot tell so well about those who are 
not baptized, and cannot help them so easily. It 
is also like the costume of people belonging to 
different nations, by which they are known im- 
mediately wherever they go, and by which their 
countrymen can tell them from strangers. For 
the people who have been baptized are as differ- 
ent from those who have not, as Englishmen are 
from Frenchmen, or Americans from Germans, 



164 BAPTISM. 

and this difference is made known to the angels 
by their baptism. 

And not only does baptism make it easier for 
the angels to help those who are baptized, but it 
makes it easier for the Lord to help them. For 
it is the Lord who employs the angels, and gives 
them all the power they have, and whatever aids 
them to do the work He wants to have them do, 
is really an aid to Him. He never commands 
anything but for the sake of doing us good, and 
He would not have commanded us to be bap- 
tized, but that He might do us good by means 
of it. 

Remember, then, that baptism was commanded 
by the Lord, to represent the cleansing of our 
souls by obedience to His truth, and as a sign 
that those who are baptized belong to His 
Church. It is, also, a sign which lets the angels 
know that we belong to the Church, so that they 
feel more interest in us, and come more readily 
to our help against evil spirits. It is also a help 
to us ourselves, when we think of it, in our 
fights against our evil passions, for it reminds us 
that we are the Lord's children, and should show 
ourselves worthy of the name into which we are 
baptized. So, you see, when children are bap- 
tized, it is a good thing for them, and it is done 
for the sake of helping them come into heaven. 



THE HOLY SUPPER. 

"And when the hour was come, He sat 
down, and the twelve apostles with Him. 
And He said unto them, With desire I have 
desired to eat this passover with you before 
I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not any 
more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the 
kingdom of God. And He took the cup, 
and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and di- 
vide it among yourselves ; for I say unto 
you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, 
until the kingdom of God shall come. And 
He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake 
it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my 
body which is given for you : this do in re- 
membrance of me. Likewise the cup after 
supper, saying, This cup is the New Testa- 
ment in my blood, which is shed for you." 
(Luke xxii. 14-20. 

Ton see here that the Lord said, " This do in 
remembrance of me," and, therefore, we come to 



166 THE HOLT SUPPER. 

gether in our places of worship, on certain Sun- 
days in the year, and eat bread and drink wine 
together, reading, at the same time, this account 
of the Holy Supper, given in the Word, that we 
may be reminded of the Lord. Though we 
knew no more about this ceremony than that He 
had commanded it, and that it made us think of 
Him and of the great redemption He effected for 
us when He was on earth, it would still be ex- 
ceedingly useful to us to perform it. It would 
still help us to love the Lord and obey Him, and 
be thankful to Him for His mercy, and thus ren- 
der us better and happier. But this is not the 
only reason why the Lord commanded us to cele- 
brate the Holy Supper as we do. You will no- 
tice that, when He gave the apostles the bread, 
He said : " This is my body which is given for 
you :" and when He gave them the cup of wine, 
He said : " This cup is the New Testament in my 
blood which is shed for you." The apostles did 
not quite understand what He meant by saying 
this, and people have disputed about it a great 
deal ever since, some, as for instance the Roman 
Catholics, thinking that the bread became really 
His flesh, and the wine His blood, but in the 
New Church we know what He meant, and 
what the bread and wine used in the Holy 
Supper really are. 



THE HOLY SUPPER. 167 

The Lord keeps our natural bodies alive and 
strong by means of all that He gives us to eat 
and drink. He makes the wheat and corn grow 
in the fields, the fruits to ripen on the trees and 
bushes, and He creates cattle, and poultry, and 
fishes, and many other nice kinds of food. He 
has also provided various drinks for us, clear, 
sparkling water, sweet milk, and the delicious 
wine which comes from grapes. All this food 
and drink, which we enjoy so much, He gives us 
from day to day, and, if He stopped doing it, 
we should soon die of hunger and thirst, as men 
sometimes do when they are shipwrecked on 
desert islands. Everybody knows this, but every- 
body does not know that our souls require food 
and drink in the same way that our natural 
bodies do. What we are taught in school and 
at church, what we read in books and papers, 
and what we hear from other people is this food 
and drink, and our souls would starve without it. 
How badly off you would be if you could not 
read a word of any book, or understand any- 
thing that was said to you, and had nothing to 
think about ? Tou might as well not have any 
soul at all, but be like a bird or a horse. And so 
the more you know and think, and use your mind 
in loving and doing good things, the more your 
soul grows. 



168 THE HOLY SUPPER. 

- Now, the best kind of food and drink for the 
soul is a knowledge of the Lord, and a love for 
Him. This knowledge and this love, the Lord 
tries to give to us in many ways. He has had 
the Bible written, that we might understand how 
good and loving He is, and what we must do to 
receive His love, and make it a part of ourselves. 
He has come and lived among men in human 
form, that they might see His nature still more 
plainly, and not fail of getting a true idea of it. 
And now, all the time, He is trying to feed each 
one of us with true thoughts concerning Him, 
and a love for Him and His laws. This is what 
he means by our eating His body and drinking 
His blood. It is receiving His own Divine love, 
which is His body, and His divine truth, which 
is His blood, into our souls, and thus keeping 
them alive and well. 

The bread and wine used in the Holy Supper 
are, of course, not in themselves this Divine flesh 
and blood. They only represent it, as the water 
used in baptizing represents the truth, which, 
when obeyed, cleanses the soul. But the Lord 
has provided that when people receive this bread 
and wine in a proper way at the Holy Supper, 
Lie can come dowm into their souls more fully 
than at other times, and feed them with His love 
and wisdom so that they go away much stronger 



THE HOLY SUPPER. 169 

and better than they were before. How He does 
this we cannot always see, but that He does do 
it we know because He says, that the bread is His 
body, and the wine His blood. So that the Holy 
Supper is not only of use in reminding us of the 
Lord and His goodness and truth, but it brings 
Him nearer to our souls, and actually feeds us 
with the food and drink He wishes to give us. 

But not only is the Lord present at the Holy 
Supper, feeding our souls with thoughts about 
Him and love for Him, but the angels also come 
down to us at such times, and heaven itself is 
open to us. For the angels love to receive the 
food and drink which the Lord gives us in the 
Holy Supper, even more than we do, and when 
we are engaged in celebrating it, they know it, 
and come to partake with us. The Lord desires 
to have them do this because they assist Him in 
what He wishes to do. They drive away evil 
spirits, and help keep our minds free from evil 
thoughts, so that nothing prevents our thinking 
of Him, and being thus among the angels, we 
are, for the time, in heaven. The Holy Supper 
therefore joins us more closely to the angels as 
well as to the Lord, and admits us into heaven 
while we are yet in this world. Still, this takes 
place only with those who truly believe in the 
Lord, and try to do what He tells us to do. It is 



170 THE HOLY SUPPER. 

of no use to those who do not, for by not be- 
lieving on Him and not obeying Him, they drive 
Him and the angels far away, and close their 
souls against both. 

The Holy Supper is, therefore, a means of re- 
minding us of the Lord and His Eedemption, of 
bringing us nearer to Him, so that we can re- 
ceive more of His goodness and truth than we do 
at other times, and of opening heaven to us and 
bringing us into it and into the company of the 
angels. It is a sign of our being received into • 
heaven, as Baptism is a sign of our being re- 
ceived into the Church. For this reason persons 
are baptized before they come to the Holy Sup- 
per, and if they are infants or children when 
they are baptized, they have to wait until they 
are old enough to understand what the Holy 
Supper means, and are in a state to receive it as 
it ought to be received. Try, therefore, to learn 
all you can about the Lord, and to obey His 
Commandments as perfectly as you can, that you 
may come to the Holy Supper worthily, and be 
fed there by the Lord, in company with His dis- 
ciples on earth and with the angels in heaven. 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE 
LORD. 

For as the lightning cometh out of the 
east and shineth even unto the west, so shall 
also the coming of the Son of Man be. 
(Matt, xxiv, 27.) 

I go to prepare a place for you ; and if I 
go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again and receive you unto myself, that 
where I am, there ye may be also. (John 
xix, 23.) 

Behold He cometh with clouds, and every 
eye shall see Him, and they also which 
pierced Him. (Rev. i, 7.) 

He that testifieth these things saith, Surely 
I come quickly : Amen. Even so, come, 
Lord Jesus. (Rev. xxii, 20.) 

I have told you why the Lord was called the 
Redeemer, or Saviour, and how He came, 
eighteen hundred and more years ago, to save us 



172 THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 

from the power of evil spirits and from our sins. 
I said also that He came again about a hundred 
years since, to once more deliver us from these 
same evil spirits, and to restore to us spiritual 
liberty. This took place at the time of the Last 
Judgment in 1757, and is called the Lord's Se- 
cond Coming. 

This Second Coming was not, like the first, a 
coming in a form which could be seen, and heard, 
and spoken with by men still in the body of flesh 
and blood. Since the Lord had once shown 
Himself in this way, and an account of what He 
said and did had been written down in a book, it 
would have been of no use to do the same thing 
a second time. Men would have learned nothing 
by it ; and, as to the evil spirits, the Lord had 
still the body He glorified at the first coming, 
and so could fight them for ever after, and 
keep them away from the bodies of men. His 
Second Coming had to take place in a different 
manner. 

"When the Lord, at His First Coming, had 
thoroughly broken up the power of the evil 
spirits, and had taught people as much as He 
could, of what they ought to do to become good 
and happy, He sent apostles in every direction 
round about Judea, to carry on the work, and to 
teach everywhere the same things He had been 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 173 

teaching. The book called the Acts of the 
Apostles tells us what these apostles did for the 
first few years, and after that, other histories re- 
late how they, and men whom they taught, went 
from place to place, telling men about the Lord 
and what they must do to be saved from evil and 
sin. v And so, in the course of a few hundred 
years, all the people of Europe became Christians, 
as we say — that is, they believed on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and promised to do what He com- 
manded. Preachers went into all the towns and 
cities, and built places of worship, or took the old 
heathen temples and threw down the altars and 
images in them, and devoted them to the worship 
of the Lord. The bishop of Rome became almost 
as great a man as the old Roman Emperors had 
been. All the other bishops and people did just 
what he told them to, and he made all the kings 
and princes do so too. He was called Pope, 
which means Father, of the whole church, and 
was really the governor of all Europe. He, and 
all the priests under him, lived in fine style, and 
people everywhere paid them the greatest re- 
spect. It seemed as though the Lord's purpose of 
building up a true church on earth had suc- 
ceeded, and that everything was going on just as 
He wanted to have it. 

But the evil spirits who had been conquered 



174 THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 

by the Lord wlien He was on earth now tried a 
new plan. They saw that their power over 
men's bodies was gone, and that Christianity was 
too firmly established for them to destroy it. So 
they thought they would try and get control of 
the Pope and his priests, and prevent them from 
teaching the people how to live good lives and 
to get to Heaven. They persuaded them that to 
make the people obey them, they ought not allow 
them to read the Bible, nor pray to the Lord for 
help against sin. The Pope and the priests 
thought this was a fine idea, and so they began 
to take the Bible away from the people, and tell 
them they must not think about religious things, 
but only do as they were bid, and that instead of 
praying to the Lord they must come to the priest 
and confess, and be forgiven. Then they went 
on to sell them pardons for sins, and to make 
them pay for permission to do wrong, and so, 
while they got very rich, the people were getting 
to live very bad lives, and to come more and more 
under the power of evil spirits, who, you may 
well imagine, were greatly delighted with their 
success. 

After things had gone on this way some time, 
and the Christian Church had become very bad 
indeed, a man named Martin Luther, seeing that 
something was wrong in it, tried to make it 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 175 

right. He tried to teach the people that the 
Pope and priests had no such power as they pre- 
tended they had, and that it was silly to pay 
them money to be forgiven for their sins. But 
Luther did not quite understand the truth him- 
self, and in opposing the Pope and the priests he 
made great mistakes. However, people were so 
tired of paying money and being tyrannized over 
by the Pope, that a great many of them joined 
him, and set up what is called the Protestant 
Church in Germany, Sweden, England, and a 
part of France. 

The evil spirits took advantage of Luther's 
mistakes as they had of the Pope's love of power. 
They persuaded the Protestants that, in order to 
fight the Pope, they must teach something very 
different from what he taught, and since he 
claimed that he and his priests could forgive sins 
for money, they must tell people that they need 
do nothing but believe that their sins were for- 
given in order to have them forgiven. They 
said the men were saved by faith alone, and that 
the Lord, when on earth, suffered all the punish- 
ment which we ought to suffer for our sins, and 
that therefore we could not be punished for them 
any more. So people, instead of trying to live 
good lives and obey the Lord's Commandments, 
only said they believed in Him, and went on and 



176 THE SECOND COMING OF THE LOKD. 

did as they pleased, and the evil spirits, instead 
of being resisted and driven away when they 
tempted people to do wrong, were allowed to 
lead them into sin, because they thought it made 
no difference. Besides this, they came to think 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, not as the God of 
Heaven and earth, but only as one of three Gods, 
and instead of worshipping Him, they worship- 
ped a Trinity, as they called it, of three persons, 
which was really no God at all. 

Another mischief, too, which was caused by 
these false teachings both of Romanists and Pro- 
testants was, that as people died and went into 
the spiritual world believing these teachings, and 
full of all kinds of evil passions, they made a 
kind of cloud between the Lord and men on 
earth, so that the latter could not see the truth 
which the Lord was trying to show them by 
means of the "Word. It was just as when a 
cloud comes over the sun and hides his light. If 
such a cloud was very thick indeed, it would 
make it as dark as night here, and if it lasted long 
enough, all men, and animals, and plants, would 
die for want of light and heat. So it was in re- 
spect to men's minds at the time I am speaking 
of. "When they read the "Word they could not see 
what it meant ; when they heard about the Lord 
they thought of Him only as one of three Gods, 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 177 

and when they were told that they must live good 
lives in order to go to Heaven, they said to them- 
selves, What difference does it make how we 
live? We are saved any way if we only have 
faith. So the Church was almost destroyed, and 
Heaven itself was in danger from the evil spirits 
who formed this great cloud over the earth. 

Of course, the Lord would not permit this 
state of things to continue. He came with the 
angels, and scattered these evil spirits as the wind 
drives the clouds out of the sky, and shut them 
up in hell so that they should not darken men's 
minds any more. He judged them, as we say — 
that is, He separated them from Heaven and 
from men, and sent them away where they be- 
longed, as a man would separate goats from 
sheep, and put each kind by themselves. And 
this great separation, which took place in the 
year 1757, we call the Last Judgment, and we 
have an account of it in the book of Revelation, 
besides a more particular account of it in the 
writings of Swedenborg. And as the Lord came 
down out of Heaven to execute this Judgment, 
it is called His Second Coming. Now, there is 
no longer any cloud of evil spirits between us 
and Him, and His light and heat can shine 
clearly into our minds. It is as if the sun had 



178 THE SECOND COMING OF THE LOKD. 

come back after a long absence and gladdened 
the earth with his glorious rays. 

In order to make this Last Judgment and Se- 
cond Coming of still greater use to us, the Lord 
appointed a man to teach people again the truth 
about Himself, and about the way to Heaven, as 
He once appointed the apostles. This man was 
Emanuel Swedenborg, and you can read more 
about him in the Child's Life of Swedenborg, 
which, I dare say, you will find in your Sabbath- 
school library. The Lord taught him a great 
many things about Himself, about the Word, 
about Heaven and hell, and about life after 
death, which had not been known before, and he 
wrote them all down in books which have been 
printed, so that every one may read them who 
wishes to. Many of these things seem very strange 
to most people, and they do not yet believe them, 
but they are all true, and every day more and 
more people are finding it out. And now that we 
have these books, and that the evil spirits have 
been driven away into hell,, so that we can read 
them and the Word in full heavenly light again, 
there is no longer any difficulty in the way of our 
leading good lives, and, after death, being happy 
among the angels. And by means of this Second 
Coming, and the teachings given through Swe- 
denborg, the Lord is establishing at this day a 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 179 

New Church, which was foretold in the book of 
Revelation under the name of the New Jeru- 
salem, about which I will tell you in my next 
chapter. 



THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE 
NEW CHURCH. 

And I saw a New Heaven and a New 
Earth : for the first heaven and the first earth 
were passed away, and there was no more 
sea. And I, John, saw the Holy City, New 
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of 
Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her 
husband. And I heard a great voice out of 
heaven, saying, behold, the tabernacle of God 
is with men, and He will dwell with them, 
and they shall be His people, and God Him- 
self shall be with them, their God. And 
God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes, and there shall be no more death, nei- 
ther sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be 
any more pain; for the former things are 
passed away. (Rev. xxi. 1-4.) 

When the Lord was upon the earth at the time 
of His First Coming, He taught His disciples a 



THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHUECH. 181 

great many new and useful things about Him- 
self, and about the way men should live in order 
to come into heaven and be forever happy. 
These things the disciples taught to other men, 
and these again to others, until the number of 
people who heard and believed them, and prom- 
ised to live according to them, became very large 
indeed. Those who thus believed on the Lord 
and promised to obey Him, received the name 
" Christians," from the Lord's name, Christ, and 
as they formed, as it were, one great family, of 
whom the Lord was the Father and Head, they 
were also called " The Church," from two Greek 
words which mean " The Lord's Family." And 
so, now, when we speak of a church, we do not 
mean the place where people meet on Sundays, 
but the people themselves, who join in the wor- 
ship and service of the Lord. Such little fami- 
lies are little churches, and the whole of them 
which are in the world at any particular time, 
taken together, are called the Church in its 
largest form. 

There have been several such great churches 
on the earth since the creation. The first one 
we call the Most Ancient Church, and it is 
spoken of in the Word under the name of Adam. 
Adam and Eve, you know, li\ r ed, at first, in the 
garden of Eden, but from not obeying the Lord 



182 THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHUBCH. 

they had to leave it, and their children and their 
children's children became, one after another, so 
wicked, that they were all destroyed by a flood 
except Noah and his wife, and his sons and their 
wives. So the Most Ancient Church came to its 
end, and another church, called the Ancient 
Church, was formed out of Noah and his chil- 
dren. This Ancient Church lasted for some 
time, but at length instead of worshipping the 
Lord, it began to worship idols like the heathen 
of the present day, and ceased to be a church, 
and the Lord took Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, and Jacob's twelve children, and made 
out of them the Jewish Church, of which we 
read so much in the "Word. The Jewish Church, 
in turn, became very wicked, and the Lord had 
to again come, this time in the form of a man 
like us, and establish the Christian Church, as I 
have just told you. And when this church lost 
all knowledge of Him, and all obedience to 
Him, as it did about a hundred years ago, He 
came again, and through Swedenborg, establish- 
ed a New Church, which was foretold in Revela- 
tion under the name of the New Jerusalem. 

The New Church, which the Lord formed at 
His Second Coming, differs from the First Chris- 
tian, or, as we generally call it, the Old Church, 
in two respects. In the first place the people 



THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHURCH. 183 

who belong to it do not believe the false doc- 
trines which wicked men, under the influence of 
evil spirits, had made the people of the Old 
Church believe, and in the second place, they 
know a great deal more about the Lord, and 
Heaven, and spiritual things than was known by 
the people of the Old Church. 

For instance, the Lord told His disciples they 
should worship Him and pray to Him alone 
when they wanted anything, but after a while 
the priests in the Old Church began to tell 
people that there were three divine persons, of 
whom the Lord was only one, and that instead 
of praying to the Lord directly, they ought to 
pray to the highest of these Three, only ask the 
Lord to intercede with Him for them. Then, the 
Lord says that men must repent of their sins, and 
live good lives in order to come into heaven, but 
people in the Old Church got to think that the 
Lord had suffered in their stead all the punish- 
ment of their sins, and that they could be saved 
either by the prayers of their priests, or by only 
believing that they were saved. Later on, some 
of them came to say that the Lord was not to 
be prayed to at all, and that he was only a man 
like us, and many who did not openly say this, 
really thought it. Other false ideas came from 
these greater ones, such as that men have no 



184 THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHURCH. 

power to obey the Commandments, that the Lord 
sends people to hell merely because He chooses 
to, that the heathen cannot come into heaven, 
( and many things of that sort. 

All these false ideas the New Church denies. 
It teaches that the Lord J esus Christ is alone to 
be prayed to and worshipped ; that there is no 
God beside Him, and that He alone has power to 
save us from onr sins. It says, that in order to 
come into heaven, we mnst do as the Lord tells 
us to do, as well as believe on Him, and that He 
did not suffer the punishment of our sins when 
He appeared on earth, but only fought and over- 
came the evil spirits who were making men 
wicked, and so delivered us from their power. 
It also teaches that we can obey the Lord if we 
will but pray to Him for help, that no one goes 
to hell because the Lord compels him to, but 
only because, by having lived a wicked life, He 
has come to like hell better than heaven, and 
that the heathen as well as Christians may be 
received into heaven, if they only try to live as 
well as they know how to. 

On the other hand, the New Church teaches 
an immense number of things which were not 
known before. The people among whom the 
Lord first established the Old Church were very 
ignorant, and could not understand any but the 



THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHUKCH. 185 

simplest truths. The twelve disciples were com- 
mon working men, full of the old Jewish ideas 
about religion, and those to whom they began to 
preach were of the same character. All they 
could tell them was what the Lord had done for 
them, that they must believe on Him, and obey 
Him. For a long time, indeed, they thought 
that the Lord was going to live always among 
men in visible form, and be a king like other 
kings. They also thought that they ought to 
keep up all the ceremonies of the Jewish Church, 
not knowing it had come to an end, and some 
of them even supposed thaft no one out of the 
Jewish Church could become a Christian. As 
the Church grew, however, and more intelligent 
people came into it, they began to understand 
things better, but still they did not make much 
advance. They knew nothing about the real 
nature of the spiritual world, and the life after 
death, of heaven and hell, except that there 
were such things, nor of the real character of 
the Lord, and the beautiful laws of His Provi- 
dence by which He governs all things. All 
these matters, and many more too, were revealed 
to Swedenborg for the use of the New Church, 
and he has written all the Lord taught in books, 
which you must read when you get old enough. 
The doctrines of the New Church, too, when 



186 THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHURCH. 

men live according to them, make them a great 
deal better and happier than those of the Old 
Church. We are taught by them not only what 
the Lord commands, but why He commands it, 
and we can, if we choose, obey Him with cheer- 
fulness and delight, instead of merely because 
we think He will punish us if we do not. We 
learn to think of Him as a loving and kind 
Father, who looks upon us as His dear children, 
and not as of a king seated on a throne, ordering 
us about for his own pleasure. Then, too, we are 
told all about heaven, and how happy we shall 
be when we come to live there among the angels, 
and how both angels and good spirits are always 
close to us, and trying4o help us become happy 
here by obeying the Lord. And the more we 
read and study the books which Swedenborg 
has written, the more we find out about all these 
pleasant things, and the happier we become. 

The number of people who know and believe 
these beautiful doctrines is as yet quite small. 
In some places they have come together, and 
built or hired houses in which to meet and 
worship the Lord, and be taught concerning 
Him ; but in many places there are not enough 
of them for this purpose. But we are all of us 
trying to tell other people what we know, and 
make them as happy in knowing it as we are 



THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHtTECH. 187 

ourselves. "We print the books written by S weden- 
borg, and send them around to every one who, we 
think, will read them ; and we publish tracts, 
preach sermons, and send out missionaries to get 
people together, and talk to them, and thus we 
shall, by-and-by, bring everybody into the New 
Church. You can help this good work, if you 
will, by learning the doctrines of the Church, 
and telling them to other people, and by giving 
all the money you can to publish books and 
tracts, and send out missionaries. Ought you 
not to do it, when the Lord has been so good to 
you as to let you know all these things ? 



HEAVEN AND HELL, AND THE 
LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

The wicked shall be turned into hell, 
and all the nations that forget God. (Ps. ix. 

17-) 
" But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the 

Commandments." (Matt. xix. 17.) 

" Blessed are they that do His Command- 
ments, that they may have right to the tree 
of life, and may enter in through the gates 
into the city. For without are dogs, and 
sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, 
and idolators, and whosoever loveth and 
maketh a lie." (Rev. xxii. ]4, 15.) 

We are not born that we may live on this 
earth for ever. The bodies of flesh and blood, 
by which we now hear, and see, and feel, and 
speak, and move about, and act, will all, some 
day, become cold, and stiff, and dead, and have 



HEAVEN AND HELL LIFE AFTER DEATH. 189 

to be put into coffins, and buried in graves, or 
vaults, out of sight. Children's bodies die, in this 
way, as well as those of grown people, and yours 
may die, too, long before you become a man or a 
woman. Tou have, I dare say, been at a funeral, 
and noticed how quietly the dead body lay in 
the coffin, looking like a wax image, and giving 
no sign of knowing anything that went on 
around it. By and by, too, the coffin was taken 
and carried away, and put into the grave, and 
that was the last you ever saw of it. 

But that was not the last of the child, or the 
man, or woman, who had, as it is said, died. 
The real child, or man, or woman, did not die, 
but only left the body, which was buried, and 
rose into the spiiitual world. As I told you, 
in explaining the Lord's Prayer, the spiritual 
world is all about us, though we do not see it 
because our eyes of flesh and blood cannot see 
spiritual things, and when this flesh and blood 
body dies, then the person who had lived in that 
body is uncovered, and sees the spiritual world, 
and all things in it, just as you can see this 
world and all things in it. And such a person 
lives in that world for ever after, because his 
spiritual body does not die, like the body you 
have here. 

But, although our lives here last but a few 



190 HEA.VEN AND HELL LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

years, while our lives in the spiritual world 
never come to an end, it is very important that 
while we are here, we should behave in such a 
way that when we enter the spiritual world we 
should be well prepared for it. For, this life is 
given us by the Lord that we may use it to 
get ready for the life in the spiritual world, 
and according as we live well or ill here, we 
shall be happy or miserable there. Those who 
live well here come into heaven and stay there, 
but those who live ill go to hell and stay there. 
The reason that people who live well go to 
heaven, and those who live ill go to hell, is be- 
cause heaven is made up of those who love the 
Lord and one another, while hell is made up of 
those who hate the Lord and one another. In 
heaven, every one loves to do just what the Lord 
wants to have him do, and this is, as I have told 
you, to make every one else as happy as possible ; 
while in hell, they are all selfish and quarrel- 
some and want to fight with one another all 
the time, and do all they can to make each other 
miserable. They cannot come into heaven be- 
cause they hate to be with the angels, and, of 
course, the angels, although they would gladly 
do them all the good in their power, cannot 
make them love to do otherwise than as they do, 
and, so, have to let them stay in hell. 



HEAVEN AND HELL LIFE AFTER DEATH. 191 

This difference between the character of the 
angels and that of evil spirits also makes a differ- 
ence between the appearance of heaven and that 
of hell. In heaven there are beautiful hills, and 
mountains, and fields, and gardens, and houses, 
and palaces, and everything else which is pleasant 
and agreeable, while in hell there are only- 
swamps, and deserts, and tangled thickets of 
thorns, and briers, and other disagreeable ob- 
jects of the same kind. For, in the spiritual 
world, what every one sees around him is a 
picture of his own character ; and, while good 
people are surrounded with good and nice 
things, wicked people bring about them objects, 
which, like themselves, are unpleasant and ugly 
to look at. Swedenborg was permitted by the 
Lord to see what there is both in heaven and in 
hell, and he has written an account of what he 
saw there in a book, called Heaven and Hell^ 
which, if you will read it, will teach you many 
things which I have not room to speak of here. 

We prepare ourselves for heaven by learning 
the Lord's Commandments, while we are here, 
and obeying them. As far as we do this, we ac- 
quire the habit of loving others, and making 
them happy, and this habit continues with us 
after death. On the other hand, if we disobey 
the Lord here, and continually do all kinds of 



192 HEAVEN AND HELL — LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

naughty things, we prepare ourselves for hell, 
because we cease to love the Lord and those 
around us, and get so into the habit of doing 
wrong that we cannot stop doing it after death. 
This is the reason why your parents and teachers 
take so much pains to teach you all about the 
Lord, and what He has told us to do and not 
to do, and it is the reason why I have had this 
little book printed. It is to help you to learn 
to live, while in this world, in such a way that 
you may, by and by, come among the angels in 
heaven, and live there for ever. 

Remember then, whenever you are tempted to 
disobey the Lord's Commandments, or to do 
wrong in any way, that every such act makes 
you less and less fit for heaven, and more fit for 
hell ; but that, on the contrary, if you strive to 
always do as the Lord would have you do, you 
are fitting yourself for heaven, and will surely 
come there, when the body which you now wear 
dies. 

THE END. 



Yl^ 



